Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“What ever happened to Single for Life?”
“I was happy to be Single for Life back when every guy I met was like Mitch,” Lili told her. “But Dark and Light aren’t like him—they’re special. They saved me from being attacked in that bar and now I have to save them from a cold, sterile, emotionless existence. And I’m going to do it.”
“All right then.” Rachel smiled at her. “I believe in you—I just worry about you too.”
“Don’t worry about me—I’ll be fine,” Lili said confidently. And she honestly believed she would.
She had no idea what Zeaga Four had in store for her…
29
LILI
Lili was feeling a lot less confident two days later when she finally stepped out of the shuttle onto the surface of Zeaga Four.
She had wanted to come sooner, but some things were impossible to rush. She’d had to find a sub for her classes and make an excuse to her faculty supervisor about a family emergency. And then she’d had to have several visits with Yipper, who was fitting her with a temporary emotion damper and a fake prosthetic sheath to fit over her left arm, as well as some fake metal sheaths to fit over her legs. She wore a fourth metal plate as well, this one over her chest to cover her breasts.
It had also taken some time to convince Commander Sylvan to let her go—especially since she was going alone. The Dark Kindred were very strict about not allowing outsiders on their planet, so taking a bunch of Kindred warriors with her as guards wasn’t an option. Yipper had declared that her best chance of getting her guys off Zeaga Four was to go in what he called “stealth mode” and together they had laid out a multi-step plan.
First, she had go to one of the many Medical Barges orbiting Zeaga Four. These were manned by Tollegs who performed surgical enhancements for free. These were accessible to everyone and unguarded, so Brock—Rachel’s husband—could drop her off and then wait for her signal.
Once aboard the Med Barge, she could slip onto a shuttle loaded with supplies for the planet’s surface. She was small enough not to be considered a threat and she wouldn’t be carrying any weapons, and so she wouldn’t attract any attention from the guards at the loading docks on the planet’s surface. Which meant she could stroll right past them in a way that a fully armed Kindred warrior couldn’t.
Once out of the loading docks, she would track down Dark and Light and hopefully convince them to come with her. When she got them alone, she would call Brock with a remote transmitter located in one of her fake leg enhancements. The Beast Kindred would swoop down to the planet’s surface just long enough for Dark and Light and Lili to climb aboard and then call the Kindred Mother Ship to fold space.
They would be through the fold before the Dark Kindred even knew their planetary space had been violated. Then Lili could take the guys back to a private suite in the Mother Ship and do her best to break through the chemical emotion block they both had in their brains.
How she was going to do that, she wasn’t sure. She had decided that she would worry about finding them on Zeaga Four and getting them back to the Mother Ship first. Everything else she would worry about later.
As plans went, it wasn’t the easiest—or the safest—but it was the best one they could come up with for breaching the dangerous Closed Planet. And so here Lili was, stepping off a supply shuttle onto the surface of Zeaga Four—or Z4 as the natives called it.
She took a deep breath as she scanned the dark gray skies above her. Yipper had warned her that the entire planet was fully mechanized and industrialized but Lili hadn’t really realized what that meant until this moment.
Looming overhead in the distance, were impossibly tall skyscrapers. The ground was completely paved without even an inch of dirt or grass showing. In fact, Lili didn’t see a bit of greenery anywhere. No trees or flowers or bushes—nothing but metal and concrete. The air smelled like dust and motor oil and strange, harsh chemicals that were probably toxic if you breathed them too long.
What an awful place to live! Lili felt another burst of certainty—she had to rescue Dark and Light from this terrible planet. They didn’t belong here.
Everywhere she looked she saw machines and machinery. Even the people—who were all male—all looked like they were half-machine. Some had robot arms or legs and others had scopes on their eyes—which reminded her of Dark and Light. Others didn’t even have legs—she saw a number of huge cyborgs that looked Kindred from the waist up but had forklifts for their lower halves.