Stranded
with the Cyborg by Cara Bristol
Coming September 22, 2015
Blurb
The daughter of the Terran
president, Penelope Aaron resented the restrictions imposed upon her,
but that was no reason to take it out on the man assigned to protect
her. She regrets how she got Agent Brock Mann booted from the
security force. But now that she’s an interplanetary ambassador
about to embark on her first diplomatic mission, she still doesn’t
want him tagging along. Especially since he seems to be stronger,
faster, more muscled, and sexier than she remembers. And pretending
to be husband? This mission couldn’t get more impossible!
Ten years ago Penelope
Isabella Aaron had been a pain in Brock Mann’s you-know-what. Much
has changed in a decade: “PIA” as he code-named her, has grown up
and is about to attend her first Alliance of Planets summit
conference, and Brock was transformed into a cyborg after a
near-fatal attack. Now a secret agent with Cyber Operations, a covert
paramilitary organization, Brock gets called in, not when the going
gets tough, but when the going gets impossible. So when he’s
unexpectedly assigned to escort Penelope to the summit meeting, he
balks at babysitting a prissy ambassador. But after a terrorist
bombing, a crash landing on a hostile planet, and a growing
attraction to his protectee, Operation: PIA may become his most
impossible assignment yet.
An excerpt from STRANDED
WITH THE CYBORG
(This is unedited. Please
forgive any boo-boos. But if you see some, let me know. Now is the
time to point them out!)
Chapter One
“What was so urgent it
couldn’t wait until I got back from Darius 4?” Brock flung
himself into the wide-backed sensa-chair, which conformed to the
angles and lines of his body to provide optimal support and comfort.
He would have preferred that an android pleasure worker fit her
realistic feminine form around him than a piece of furniture—as
he’d been about to experience when the Cyber-Operations director’s
summons had come through. “You’re the one who insisted I take
respite time.”
“Drink?” Carter
punched a button on his console, a cabinet slid open, and he removed
a decanter. After pouring two shots of bronze liqueur, he shoved one
across the desk.
Brock’s internal warning
system flashed an alert. “What’s the bad news?”
“Why do you assume
that?”
“Whenever you break out
the Cerinian brandy, you’re either trying to butter me up or soften
the blow.” He eyed the man who’d been his friend since they
served together in the Terran Central Protection Office thirteen
years ago. Carter’s blank expression betrayed nothing, but the
brandy sang like a yellow songbird.
The director knocked back
his shot, then thumped his chest with his fist. Cerinian brandy went
down smooth until the afterburn lit your throat on fire. Or it did to
one who was unaltered. Brock swallowed his and felt only slight
warmth.
“I have an assignment
for you,” Carter said, his voice hoarse from the liqueur. “The
Association of Planets Summit is on Malodonus next week. There’s
been a threat against…the Terran ambassador,” he hesitated like
he expected Brock to short-circuit a computer chip.
After five years without a
day off, Brock had been ordered to take R & R or be reassigned to
desk duty. His irritation with the edict had been relieved somewhat
when he’d arrived at the Darius 4 pleasure resort and discovered
the android sex workers were almost lifelike.
First Carter told him to
go, then he called him back. Brock wouldn’t blow any gaskets, but
he was irked. Quit jerking me around. “What government official
hasn’t received a threat? It’s part of the job. What’s so
special about this case?” He shifted in the sensa-chair so its
fingers could massage his lower back.
“According to intel,
Lamis-Odg is involved.”
Lamis-Odg had contributed
nothing significant or positive toward the advancement of society in
thousands of years, yet opposed the AOP’s goal to draw the peoples
of the galaxy into an alliance. Historically, the backwater planet
had been more bluster than bite, but in recent years had resorted to
terrorism to intimidate its adversaries.
Brock flexed his right
hand. “How certain is the threat?”
“It’s being treated as
a level two.”
Level one threats most
often represented the rantings of a lunatic who would not act on the
threat—or lacked the means to do so. In a level two, a specific
target had been named by a perpetrator who might have the means to
carry it out. Level three was considered probable, and level four was
imminent.
Call me when it gets to
level four.
Carter spread his hands.
“I’m told the CPO has intercepted a transmission indicating the
ambassador was recently placed on Lamis-Odg’s enemies of the state
list.”
“So no specific plot has
been identified?”
“No. The risk was bumped
from level one to two because she is an ambassador, and other
intercepted communiques suggest Lamis-Odg has become more active.”
“So why doesn’t the
Central Protection Office handle it?” Guarding government and
diplomatic personnel fell into their bailiwick. When he’d been a
CPO agent, he’d managed level two and three risks all the time.
While a two should be taken seriously, it didn’t require the
specialized abilities of the covert Cyber Operations force.
“The ambassador has
refused protection.”
Figures. “Why?”
“She has a meeting with
the Xenian emperor to convince him to send a delegate to the Summit
and join the AOP.”
Brock scanned his memory
banks for information on the small planet in the Omicron sector.
Like Lamis-Odg, Xenia had no interest in joining the AOP. Unlike
Lamis-Odg, the Xenians weren’t hostile or violent—they were
pacifists who shied away from conflict and interplanetary politics.
Carter continued, “She
fears showing up with a security detail will send the message there’s
something to be wary of.”
“Isn’t there?” Brock
said drily, and then added, “if the ambassador has refused security
then I don’t see why it’s our problem.”
“I was asked for a
favor.”
The bad premonition that
Brock had gotten when he’d received the summons, and again when
Carter had broken out the brandy grew stronger. “Suppose you cut to
the chase.”
“The ambassador is
Mikala Aaron’s daughter.”
Sonofabitch. “Pia?”
Carter nodded.
Pia. Short for Penelope
Isabella Aaron, or as Brock had code-named his former protectee, Pain
in the Ass. Every member of the Terran First Family had a designated
CPO agent assigned to him or her.
An adolescent Pia had done
her damnedest to dodge him. He couldn’t count the number of times
he’d caught her attempting to sneak out of the executive residence
unescorted. Nor had he appreciated her practical jokes and dirty
tricks. When her attempts to shake him had failed, she’d lodged
false charges of sexual misconduct.
Shot at numerous times
during his career, Brock had been seriously wounded twice and almost
fatally once. Pia had been his waterloo—or would have been if
Mikala Aaron, aware of her daughter’s machinations, hadn’t
stepped in.
Brock folded his arms
across his chest. “It doesn’t have to be me. Get somebody else.”
“President Aaron has
requested you.”
“Former President Aaron.
She’s a civilian now. And we don’t report to the president
anyway.”
Carter sighed. “I could
order you to do it.”
As Cy-Ops director, Carter
was Brock’s superior—technically. But the organization
officially did not exist, and commanding a band of rogues who
operated outside the law required finesse, rather than blunt orders.
“You won’t,” Brock said.
Carter inhaled, held his
breath for a moment, and then exhaled. “No. I’m asking you to do
it—as a favor to me.”
Favors, like shit, rolled
downhill.
“Don’t do this to me,”
he said, arguing against the inevitable. He owed Carter his life. If
not for the director, Brock would have died in a military hospital or
been left a shell of man, a chunk of his brain gone, an arm and two
legs missing. Carter’s secret force had whisked him from the
intensive care unit to a clandestine cybermed installation.
Brock had been in no
condition to consent to the treatment he’d been subjected to, but
if he had been aware, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He wanted to
live—but not as half a man. Cybermed docs had injected him with
nanocytes, tiny robotic cells, and implanted a microcomputer in his
brain to control them. He’d been fitted with prosthetic limbs.
Under the influence of the biomimetic particles, he’d regenerated
human muscle, tendon, and skin. Excruciatingly painfully, but it had
happened. They’d kept him unconscious for most of it.
When he’d awakened, his
body—and to some degree, his mind—had been rebuilt. He’d been
transformed into a bigger, stronger, more resilient Brock. And then
Carter had recruited him as a cyberoperative.
Cyber Operations didn’t
respond when the going got tough, Cy-Ops responded when the going got
impossible. When you got ready to kiss your ass goodbye, that’s
when Cy-Ops moved in.
To call a cyberoperative
to escort an ambassador to a summit meeting? Ridiculous. A waste of
manpower. That the protectee was Pia, made it impossible. So maybe
Cy-Ops’s involvement made sense in a twisted way.
“Ten years has passed.
Penelope is different now,” Carter said.
Brock doubted that. “Does
she know about me?”
“That you’re a cyborg?
Of course not. She hasn’t been told anything about the program or
even that you’re the one who’s been assigned to her.”
“Yeah, spring it on her.
That will go over well.” He could envision the tantrum, and after
she calmed down, the scheme she would devise to circumvent the
decision. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been emerging from
his quarters half dressed, a triumphant smile tilting her lips.
Shortly, thereafter, two of his fellow agents had come to arrest him.
President Aaron had
exonerated him; the transcripts from the investigation had been
sealed; and he’d been offered a reassignment. Instead, he’d taken
a position with an anti-terrorist investigative organization. His
unit got attacked; his fellow operatives had died. Carter, who’d
been working with Cy-Ops all along, had swooped in and saved his ass.
“I’m not saying I’ll
do it, but hypothetically if I had a computer meltdown and agreed,
what would be my cover story? I couldn’t tag along as her bodyguard
because that would unsettle the Xenians.”
Carter poured another shot
of Cerinian brandy and downed it. He met Brock’s gaze dead-on.
“You’d accompany Ambassador Aaron as her husband.”
“Oh, hell no!”
