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Zune led Xian on through Sector TW7, knowing that there were more than just robots wandering the ruins. There were also roving gangs of masked cyborgs (raiders), outcasts with incurable diseases, and violent scavengers. That Xian had survived for a year on her own was remarkable to Zune, but when she asked Xian how she had done it, the woman had meekly replied that she was very good at hiding.
Zune wanted to get them to their destination quickly. Xian needed more supplies, Zune needed a battery, and the old depot wasn’t far. Zune marched toward it, helping Xian climb over heaps of scrap, pausing when she heard a sound. She was certain they were being followed, but not wanting to alarm Xian, she kept the information to herself. Her goal was to have Xian inside the military depot within the hour. They could barricade themselves in easily and perhaps lose their lurker.
When they had reached the depot, however, it was to find that other humans were already there, sitting on the step, with an old electric lantern glowing blue beside them. The depot itself was a large white building – dingy now, the paint chipped away, and some of the walls now ripped of their brickwork, leaving only skeletal frames and wiring. The roof’s dome was still intact, having been made from a transparent glass-like alloy that was nonetheless solid as metal.
While living in the depot, Zune had enjoyed sunbathing beneath the dome, lying on her back in the sunlight and eating fluffernutters she’d made from the old rations she’d found in storage. Sometimes nutrition cubes just didn’t do it.
Seeing the two men sitting on the front step of the depot filled Zune with mild indignation. While she recognized that the depot didn’t exactly belong to her, it still felt as if she had come home to find people sitting on her step and eating her food.
Thankfully, one scan from Zune’s left eye told her the men on the step at least carried no diseases. They were, however, carrying weapons. The one on the right had a shabby laser pistol and the other was carrying a laser sword on his belt. They wore rags with gasmasks pushed back on their foreheads as they sat side by side, messy hair, covered in filth, enjoying the rations they had taken from the depot with greasy black fingers.
“They could prove dangerous,” said Zune in a low undertone to Xian. “Stay close to me.” She held back a smile when Xian grabbed the back of her jumpsuit and moved close. She liked it whenever Xian clung to her.
Zune approached and heard Xian close on her heels. When the men saw Xian, they brightened, and Zune could see their erogenous zones firing. The scan results were scrolling before her vision in tiny blue digital print: they were both becoming sexually excited at the sight of Xian!
Scowling slightly, Zune pointedly put an arm around Xian’s shoulders. Xian looked up at her in amazement, no doubt wondering where her strange behavior was coming from. Zune didn’t take her arm from around Xian, which – she was glad to see – wiped the hopeful smiles from the males’ eager faces. Now they looked sullen . . . and angry.
Good, Zune thought. A fierce desire to protect Xian was overpowering her, and all because of those scan results. That two males were lusting after Xian both alarmed and infuriated her. And of course, Xian had no idea, looking at them all as if they were insane. She couldn’t understand why the men – so jovial a moment before – were now so cold and angry, and why Zune was now so protective and furious.
The men rose to their feet, and ignoring Zune completely, they both looked at Xian.
“Is this woman holding you hostage, girl?” asked the man on the right, blue crumbs from his nutrition cube spraying uncouthly from his mouth as he chewed.
The other man pulled his laser pistol, staring intently at Zune with glowering hatred. “We don’t like slavers,” he said. And indeed, he had a red wound around his throat where a slave’s collar used to be.
Zune’s muscly arm tightened around Xian. She had a laser sword on her belt, and it was buckled in the front. There was a laser rifle on her back as well, but they would have noticed her pulling it before it was too late. Very slowly, she reached for the laser sword.
“Slavers?” Xian repeated in amazement, turning the men’s eyes back on her.
It wasn‘t uncommon for cyborgs to take scavengers hostage as slaves. Given that soldier cyborgs were exceedingly rare, most cyborgs were raiders and frequently attacked settlements, kidnapping women and children, who then lived lives of untold horror. Zune had liberated a few of them from raider camps, but it was never enough. There was always a woman she had missed, a child she hadn’t rescued in time. She looked at these men now, carefully, wondering if they were ex-slaves turned raiders in their own right. Her scans had shown no cybernetics under their clothes. Perhaps they were exiles from some settlement.
“Zune is no slaver!” said Xian hotly, indignantly. Her small hands were balled into fists at her sides. “She’s a soldier!”
“She’s wearing a military jumpsuit, yeah,” said the man with the pistol, eying Zune with glittering dislike, “but you can find those sealed in most depots.” He jerked his head at the great domed building behind him. “There’s a shitton in there. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah, the soldiers from the World War are all dead,” added the other man, who’d been eating the nutrition cube. He popped the last blue piece in his mouth and jerked his head darkly at Zune. “Whatever she’s told you, it’s a lie. She’s a bonafide raider if I ever seen one. Was probably takin’ you to her master’s camp the whole time.”
Xian looked quickly up at Zune, and she suddenly seemed so small and helpless, wondering who to believe. She was barely five feet tall, while Zune was almost six feet and musclebound.
“Don’t listen to them, Xian,” Zune said. “They would take you from me—”
“Take me!” Xian repeated. She wiggled free of Zune’s arm, looking angry and betrayed, and Zune looked down at her, trying not to show how stung and hurt she felt. But why should Xian believe her over other pure humans? They had known each other all of a few days, and cyborgs in general weren’t trusted.
The man who’d been eating the nutrition cube laughed loudly. “Looks like the game is up, bot-bitch.”
The man with the pistol looked at Xian. “You can come with us, girl. We’ll take care of you, get some food in you . . . Maybe get some dick in you. Been a long time since Zet and I hadda woman. You a virgin, girl?” His blue eyes were greedy. “Them titties look like teen titties. How old are you?”
Xian looked horrified. She slowly started to back away, and it was clear she felt cornered by all of them, even Zune.
Zune felt a stab of frustration. Why was Xian listening to these random, filthy-mouthed men? But she had to remind herself that she was a stranger, too. She was as random to Xian as these men. Xian had survived by avoiding cyborgs. That she had trusted Zune at all was remarkable.
“Don’t be scared now, girlie,” said the man with the pistol, and his voice softened as if he were speaking to a wild animal on the verge of fleeing.
The second man slowly pulled his laser sword. Deactivated, it was little more than a short black rod, but when he pushed a flat switch on the side, a red beam of light extended from it. He smiled, the red light reflected in his eyes, so that he looked like a demon as she said, “Come on, girlie-girlie. Come to Zet and open wide . . .”
The men laughed nastily.
Xian scowled. “Fuck you!” she yelled.
The men exchanged looks: they didn’t like that.
The man with the pistol aimed at Xian’s leg. “You try and run, girl,” he said darkly, “and I’ll blast your leg off from the knee down. You don’t need no legs for me to fuck you.”
Xian stood frozen, her eyes wide. The pistol had almost fired when Zune pulled her laser sword in a flashing arc, and it hummed with power as she sliced the man's pistol hand clean away. She ignored the blood that spattered her face, as beside her, Xian shrieked and staggered backward. As his hand – still clutching the laser pistol—landed in the dirt, the man griped his gushing forearm and screamed and screamed, as beside him, his dumbfounded friend stared in horror.
With cold fury, Zune pirouetted and took the screaming man’s head off. His limp body tumbled down the stair, stopping at her feet. She could hear his head thumping along the gravel and debris, squirting blood as it went. She looked up at the remaining man, her blue eyes deadly.
“You whore!” wailed the man. “I’ll kill you both!” he snarled, and he lunged down the steps at Xian, his laser sword raised. Xian tried to run, and he grabbed the back of her jacket and shirt in a fistful, causing her shirt to pull up over her slender belly. She tried to pull away, and her shirt tore, revealing one of her high breasts. Xian fell hard on her knee and tumbled over on her seat, and just as the red blade was coming down on her, Zune caught the man’s sword arm by the wrist and squeezed. The scavenger screamed, his eyes shrinking in pain, as the metal bones in Zune’s right hand crushed his wrist, until white bones poked through the oozing red flesh, until his hand crumpled and the laser sword extinguished, collapsing in the dirt. The man screamed and sobbed, spit dripping from his mouth, caught in Zune’s merciless grasp. Glaring into his contorted face, Zune shoved him back in disgust and took his head off – instantly muting his sobs.
Zune let the scavenger’s body drop down the stairs to join his friend, and in the silence that followed, she looked around to find Xian shaking and whimpering softly where she sat in the dirt. She was spattered with blood and her green eyes were filled with tears. In all their time together, Xian had seen Zune kill many robots in her defense, but never a human. She was in shock.
Blue eyes softening, Zune knelt before Xian, hesitated, and touched her cheek. It was warm. So warm. So many parts of Zune were icy metal, she had nearly forgotten what it felt like, the warmth of skin. Even the parts of her that were still human flesh had a cold layer beneath that was unpleasant, stiff. Xian was the first woman she had touched in one thousand years, and doing so always left an ache in her.
Zune had expected Xian to cringe from her touch, but she did not. Instead, she stayed still, looking at Zune with her wide green eyes as tears trickled freely down her face. She was shaking still.
“He nearly killed me,” said Xian in a small voice. She shook her head. “If I had been alone, they would have r-raped me and killed me.”
“But you weren’t alone,” said Zune soothingly.
“You’re not a raider,” said Xian apologetically. “If you were, you would’ve t-taken me by force but you . . .” She blushed hard and dropped her eyes. Then she glanced down at her chest, and as if suddenly realizing where she was and how she looked, she clutched her jacket shut over her exposed breast and pushed her limp blonde hair behind her ear.
Zune sheathed her deactivated laser sword on her belt and offered her hands. Xian reached to take them, but Zune gripped the smaller woman’s waist and lifted her easily to her feet. She looked intently into Xian’s face as she lifted her, and she could feel the arousal sweeping through her again. A quick scan showed that Xian was just as aroused. The tiny digital print that scrolled before Zune’s eyes noted that Xian’s clitoris was throbbing and her nipples were hard.
Xian stared dreamily into Zune’s face, then rocked up on tiptoe and kissed her slowly on the lips. Suddenly overcome with emotion, Zune threw her arms around Xian and hunched down, hugging her close, breathing in her hair.
It had never occurred to Zune that Xian could be harmed, so confident she had always been in her ability to protect her. But the man with the laser sword had come so close. Zune’s muscly arms shook, and Xian huddled close in her embrace, eyes closed and smiling.