Cyborg Nation (39 page)

Bronte had been staring at him with fear, disbelief, and growing anger as he produced the charges against them, but the last was outrageous enough to leave her gasping. “They did
not
rape me!” she said angrily.

He tilted his head, studying her through narrowed eyes. “I saw myself that you were hysterical when you were told that they had impregnated you.”

Bronte felt so weak with sheer horror that she thought for several moments that she would faint or be sick. “You told them that?”

“The med tech reported it,” he said tightly. “I did not. Though I would have had he not.”

Her chin wobbled. “He was wrong! That wasn’t it at all! He didn’t understand! Oh god!”

Chapter Twenty Three

How to explain to people who didn’t experience the ravages emotions could visit upon you that they’d completely misinterpreted hysterical relief for hysterical trauma? Another woman would’ve understood. She thought maybe even the cyborg women would’ve been able to understand the mood swings associated with pregnancy. Compound those with what she’d been through and surely any woman could completely relate to that kind of breakdown. Even if they were better at controlling themselves, they’d understand the need to let it out, the difficulty of holding all that in.

If she’d tried to explain it to a
human
man he wouldn’t have understood.

She thought the cyborg males were even less likely to understand.

It didn’t help that they didn’t seem to experience fear and had no reason to understand health issues since they didn’t really have those either.

How was she supposed to have known they’d interpret it that way? It hadn’t occurred to her--at all--or she would’ve said something before, tried to do something about it. She certainly hadn’t
said
anything to make them think any of her companions had hurt her in any way!

She’d thought they were being held for fairly basic questioning procedures. She hadn’t liked it. She’d thought it was going on far longer than it should have, but she’d still thought it was the sort of thing pretty much any pilot and crew would be subjected to if they’d crashed such an expensive and hard to replace piece of equipment.

“It wasn’t that!” she said tearfully. “It wasn’t anything they’d done—at least not with the intention of hurting me! I would’ve died in the crash if they hadn’t given me their nanos. There was nothing else they could’ve done except just let me die. I knew that, but I also knew the nanos weren’t designed for humans. When the wound healed but the knot started growing in my stomach I thought it was something horrible wrong with me and I was scared silly. But all I could do was worry about it. I couldn’t do anything, and
they
couldn’t do anything to help me if it was a tumor of some kind.

“And when I found out it wasn’t something horrible at all, but babies, I just … lost it—lost control of everything I’d been trying to be strong about. I know you probably don’t understand and it probably sounds crazy, but it’s true.

“Can’t you go to them and explain that? I don’t care what you tell them. Tell them I’m crazy! Tell them I’m stupid! Tell them it’s because I’m pregnant and pregnant women just go to pieces for silly things that don’t mean anything. Just don’t let them think they hurt me, because they didn’t!”

He listened, but she didn’t think he believed her. She knew he didn’t when he spoke. “You are afraid of them.”

“I’m afraid
for
them,” she disputed angrily, “not
of
them! This is a nightmare! Please! Can’t you talk to someone and try to get this straightened out? It’s just a misunderstanding.”

He shook his head. “I will try, but I must tell you that it will do no good. They will summon you to speak when they are ready to hear more, and not before that.”

A mixture of hope and dismay filled her. “But they will let me speak? They’ll give me the chance to straighten this out?”

He sent her a wry glance. “They will question you until they are satisfied that they have the truth … Just as they are questioning your companions now and examining the wreckage. They are well aware of the human propensity for lies and deceit. They will not merely listen and accept whatever you choose to tell them.”

That sounded ominous and it scared her more, but she
had
told him the truth. They’d never done anything she didn’t want them to.

Well, maybe they’d gone just a little overboard with teasing and she hadn’t actually liked that, or rather she hadn’t liked them teasing her and then withholding the release, but she’d still enjoyed it right up until they’d left. She’d forgiven them for that when she’d finally understood the big lugs thought they had to go to those lengths to convince her to contract with them.

As she worked the first shock off she remembered Caleb had said they hadn’t produced the contracts. Had they disposed of the contracts because of the argument and now had nothing to back up a claim that she’d been willing? Or had they disposed of the contracts because they thought
she
was the one accusing them of all those things?

She wasn’t allowed to see or talk to them. They might have been too angry to talk to her even if she’d been allowed, but as it was she certainly couldn’t even try to work things out.

She shrugged that off. It didn’t matter. It was something they could work out
after
they got out of the brig. All that mattered was convincing their superiors that they’d done everything they should have and nothing they shouldn’t have.

She would have to control her wayward emotions, no matter how afraid or upset she got when they questioned her. They weren’t going to be impressed, at all, if she broke down and cried. She could see Caleb just thought her emotionalism was
more
proof that they’d traumatized her, not proof of their innocence.

* * * *

“Do you think that Bronte is alright?” Gabriel asked for perhaps the hundredth time.

Gideon gritted his teeth and held onto his temper with an effort. “I do not know any more than you do, Gabriel.”

“Yes, but what do you think?”

Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face and turned to pace his cell again, two paces across and three back. When he reached his cot, he threw himself down on it. “They took her to the med center. They will have treated her,” he said finally.

“Why did you argue with her that last day? What did you argue about?” Jerico demanded from his cell on the other side of Gabriel’s.

Gideon swallowed against a hard knot that felt like a fist in his throat. “I was angry and she became angry. I do not recall why.”

“You can not have forgotten unless your memory chip was damaged in the crash,” Jerico snarled angrily.

“It will do us no good if we are at each other’s throats,” Gideon growled. “We are already accused of a complete lack of discipline!”

“This is worse than being confined on the damned ship for months on end!” Jerico said irritably.

“Aye, else I would have knocked your teeth down your throat long before now,” Gideon snapped.

“You may have tried!”

“What I do not understand is why she has not tried to come to see us,” Gabriel put in. “She must
still
be angry with you.”

Gideon sat up abruptly, dropping his feet over the side of his cot and caught his head in his hands. “I accused of her of being in breach because she would not say what she thought was wrong and she said that I should break the contract.”

Neither Jerico nor Gabriel spoke for several moments.

“She did not mention that she would break with me and Jerico, though, did she?” Gabriel asked.

Gideon dropped his hands and slid a narrow eyed glare at Gabriel in the cell across from him. “Gabriel, I will strangle you with my bare hands....” He broke off abruptly. “It would not matter what she had said if that twice damned tablet had not broken! Now she is angry
and
we do not have the contracts!”

“I do not believe they tried to recapture the missing data!” Jerico put in, instantly diverted by his anger over that matter. “I would not put it past them to have tampered with the tablet and destroyed the documents before we could record them with the hall of records! They took one look at our beautiful Bronte and decided that she would suit them!”

“They will guard her.”

“But not
for
us. They will guard her
from
us!” Gideon growled.

A prolonged silence fell. “I miss cuddling with her,” Gabriel said morosely. “I had not thought I liked it that much but now I can not think of much else when I try to sleep. It is like something is gone that should be there.”

Gideon shot from his cot and began to pace again.

“Do not start that again, Gabriel!” Jerico snarled. “Or I will
help
Gideon throttle you when we get out of here!”

“They will not allow her to come,” Gideon said finally.

“Why would they not?” Gabriel demanded indignantly.

“Because we have claimed and we have no proof,” Gideon retorted tiredly, returning to his cot and settling on it again.

“If you are right, and it is not that Bronte does not want to see us, then mayhap we can convince her to sign with us again when we get out,” Gabriel said hopefully.

Gideon dropped an arm across his eyes. “Mayhap—if we have not already lost her before they allow us to leave.”

* * * *

It was all very well to tell herself that she must be calm, cool, and collected when she finally got her chance to speak for her men. It was another matter entirely to spend the better part of two weeks agonizing over the situation and the disaster she’d be facing if she failed and then
still
be calm.

She thought she might have handled it better if they hadn’t brought Gideon and Gabriel and Jerico into the chamber wearing prison uniforms and manacles. Seeing them at all was enough to throw her completely off kilter, but to see them like that, as if they’d already been convicted of what they’d been accused of, made her long to leap from her seat and rush from the room to cry her eyes out.

Because she could
not
cry in front of the investigating committee, she told herself angrily.

By the time she had regained her self-control enough to venture a peek at them, all three had been seated and were staring stonily at the men presiding over the hearing.

Caleb, seated beside her, divided a look between her and the men. She refused to meet his gaze when she felt him studying her, but she knew what was running through his mind. He thought she wouldn’t look at them because she was afraid of them, not because she was afraid she would ruin everything.

She was afraid the men sitting in judgment on them would think the same thing, but at least they would still doubt.

Maybe if she leapt to her feet and ran to embrace them, she thought a little wildly? Wouldn’t that prove she wasn’t afraid of them? And if she wasn’t, then nothing they’d thought could be true?

Or would they just think she’d lost her mind?

She calmed somewhat when they began by asking her questions about the crash. She’d thought through everything, over and over, carefully piecing her memories together until she was certain she could answer all of their questions without getting rattled. She had decided, after Caleb’s nasty remark, that she would be very careful to tell the absolute truth in every instance.

Unless things seemed to be going badly and then she would lie through her teeth and tell them whatever sounded good.

There were three men sitting on the committee—the three highest ranking of the entire colony according to Caleb—who’d been kind enough to point out that this was the one and only opportunity to settle the matter, one way or another. They looked hard, and cold, and completely uncompromising.

She had a bad feeling that being human wasn’t going to make points with them.

It was first time since she’d arrived that she’d felt completely alien. The fact that they were all cyborgs had never been far from the back of her mind at any time, and yet watching them go about their daily lives with the same focus on their personal concerns as the citizens in any other city she’d been lulled into a sense of only being a stranger in a new city, hadn’t felt like a complete outsider until now.

“How long after the first sound of the proximity alarm before the meteor struck?”

The question jolted Bronte out of her self-absorption and she looked at the man who’d asked the question wide-eyed for several moments while she scrambled to focus.

If he hadn’t been so scary looking, she thought he would’ve been very attractive—he was certainly handsome, but dark in a way that went beyond dangerous—which actually didn’t surprise her. He was a national hero to the cyborgs, high commander of their armed forces now—Reuel, the first to go rogue according to legend and the one who’d united the rogues and formed them into a fighting unit that could have wiped out the human race if he’d been so inclined.

It had to say a great deal for him that he’d led them here instead, far enough from the people that were their enemies to have a chance of peace since there was no chance of peaceful co-existence.

“I don’t have an internal clock,” she stammered, and then wished she hadn’t reminded them she wasn’t like they were. “But no more than a few moments, certainly. Gideon had only had time to ask the computer the direction and velocity when it hit.”

“There was no alarm prior to that?”

“No.”

“The alarm was disengaged.”

“
Then
, when it went off the one and only time, and that was to make it possible for Gideon and Gabriel and Jerico to communicate with one another.”

“Master Sergeant Caleb has reported to this committee that you stated the ship came under fire at the time it left Earth.”

Surprise flickered through her that he’d gone to them as he’d promised. She fought the urge to glance at him. “Yes.”

“But there was no damage?”

“Not that I was aware of,” Bronte said pointedly, resisting the urge to offer Caleb’s theory, hoping he’d done so when he mentioned it to them.

“But you believe there could have been?”

Bronte shrugged. “I’m a doctor not an engineer. All I know is that both explosions were very close and the concussions caused violent tremors in the ship.”