Provoking odium, p.1
Provoking Odium, page 1
PROVOKING ODIUM
CYNTHIA SAX
Provoking Odium
Copyright 2022 Cynthia Sax
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Cover Design by Amanda Kelsey at Razzle Dazzle Design
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Discover more books by Cynthia Sax at her website
www.CynthiaSax.com
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All Rights Are Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this story are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First edition: June 2022
For more information contact Cynthia Sax at
www.CynthiaSax.com
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Other Books By Cynthia Sax
Grin And Bare Him - Excerpt
About Cynthia Sax
PROVOKING ODIUM
A Beautiful Cyborg
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While accompanying his leader on a mission, Odium, an E Model cyborg, hears a distress call over the communication lines. The voice on that message makes his circuits surge with energy and all his systems light up. He has to respond to the mysterious female, would risk his lifespan and the lifespans of everyone on board their ship to protect her.
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A Human Female Others Call Beast
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Briella gained her nickname due to her flying abilities, her fearlessness, and her scarred countenance. Her verbal-only relationship with the sexy cyborg who answers her distress call is a steamy yet short-lived fantasy. His kind is physically perfect, and she is…not. He will uncover that truth when…if they survive the attack upon her freighter.
Provoking Odium is a STANDALONE Cyborg SciFi Romance set in a dark, gritty, sometimes-violent universe.
It features a human female intent on remaining mysterious, a cyborg warrior determined to uncover her identity, and an enemy seeking to destroy them both before they have the opportunity to meet.
CHAPTER ONE
“Fly away, fighter pilot. Fly away.” Briella belted out the lyrics of the popular Tegmen tune.
Her singing was loud and gloriously off-key. There was no one on the bridge, in her modified freighter, or in the universe who cared about her voice…or about her.
That freed her to do whatever she wished.
And what she wished to do right now was vocally murder her favorite song.
“Wage war on another heart.” She guided her ship toward Praecipua Trois as she repeated the soul-wrenching refrain. “There’s nothing left of mine. Ohhhhhhh…”
She extended that note into an ear-splitting wail and gunned the engines.
The fighting on the planet’s surface was already visible on the main viewscreen. Plumes from explosions billowed over the land masses. The Humanoid Alliance sought to decimate the more-peaceful local population and, by the looks of it, they were close to achieving that horrific goal.
“Fly away, fighter pilot. Fly away.” She sang louder, trying to drown out the tension building inside her. Her fingers splayed over the control panel. She flew her freighter faster toward the battle site.
Her ship would land in time for her to save the locals. Briella jutted her jaw. The beings were depending on her. She—
A light flashed on the console. She smacked the mute button. Silence fell on the bridge.
She opened communications. “If your credits are good, I’m your pilot.”
“A mercenary approach to life won’t fuel your soul, Beast,” Levi-Lucas the Third informed her prissily. Her contact at Beings For Peace had a stick the size of a support beam stuck up his ass. “We’re saving lives. That’s much more important than credits.”
“It’s not much more important to me,” she lied. There were easier ways to earn credits. She accepted the rescue missions for more-private reasons. “They don’t call me Beast merely because of my pretty face.” She skimmed her fingertips over one of the scars on her left cheek. “Some beings claim I have no soul.”
One of those beings had spat that declaration at her half a lifespan ago while he carved flesh off her face. She had screamed with agony and fought like the demon he believed her to be. The male, a father of a friend, had sought to gouge out her processor-equipped mechanical left eye. His efforts fortunately had been inept. Her father had stopped him before he was successful.
“Everyone has a soul.” Levi-Lucas the Third’s tone relayed he had doubts about that.
Great. Her lips twisted. She’d convinced another being she was evil. “Whatcha got for me?”
“This mission is dangerous.” He stated that obvious fact. The Beings For Peace operative only needed her for the treacherous tasks. “It’s too risky for any of my pilots.”
She, in contrast, was disposable. No one would miss her if she died.
“You don’t have to sell me on this assignment, LLTT.” She forced the lightness in her voice. “I’m in. Give me the coordinates.”
“It’s a pickup – twenty-eight locals.” He sent her their location. “They’re trapped in a dormant volcano. There’s only one exit to the site, and the Humanoid Alliance has it blocked. I doubt even you can pull off this rescue, but if you do, drop them at the usual location—the first friendly planet. We’ll take it from there.”
“Is there any intel on the opposing forces?” She wanted to know what she’d be facing. “Are the Humanoid Alliance using robots or any of those scary undead fuckers to fight this war?”
Those warriors didn’t care if they were blown to pieces, which made them pains in the ass to evade. They kept coming and coming and coming.
“The Humanoid Alliance has utilized exclusively humans for the fighting thus far,” Levi-Lucas the Third confirmed.
That was strange. She frowned. The Humanoid Alliance rarely risked their own kind.
But she was happy for that deviation. It upped her chances of surviving the mission.
“Gotcha.” She planned her route. “Consider this done.”
“You truly are a beast—fearless and—”
Briella ended the transmission, severing the male’s insincere fawning. She didn’t risk her lifespan for his empty words.
An image flashed through her mind. An older male with her coloring hugged an older female sporting a chin like hers. Another female and another male crowded around them. They all had their natural eyes, and they were smiling.
She touched the goggles hanging around her neck. Her family might’ve rejected her, might’ve sent her away without uttering any goodbyes, but she’d never stopped loving them, never stopped wishing they’d accept her communications, reach out to her.
When they finally contacted her, it’d been too late. “I couldn’t save you.”
Her pride had killed them. That guilt would cling to her forever.
She wouldn’t add more regrets to her vast collection. “I’ll rescue these beings.” She returned both of her palms to the control panel and scanned all possible routes to the pickup site.
That task took mere heartbeats. Her lips flattened. Her Beings For Peace contact had been right. There was only one viable entry point into the dormant volcano.
Water, long evaporated, had carved a pathway through the base of the funnel. The gap was close to the dry riverbed. Its span was an arm’s length wider than her ship.
That was why those beings remained alive. The Humanoid Alliance warships were larger than her freighter. They couldn’t fly through the gap.
And the human forces wouldn’t enter by foot. That was too risky.
They couldn’t advance.
But the locals were also trapped. The enemy waited with their missiles and their killing machines outside the circle of rock. The Praecipuans would eventually run out of food, would be forced to exit.
And then the Humanoid Alliance would slaughter them as they had slaughtered her family.
“Like Hyadum I’ll allow that to happen.” Briella steered her ship along the riverbed’s path.
The Humanoid Alliance redirected some of their firepower her way. Missiles arced toward her freighter.
Alarms sounded and lights flashed. She waited, waited, waited, then veered left. Wall panels vibrated as the missiles shot past her. That was how close they’d been to the freighter, how near she’d been to death.
“Fuck. This requires music.” She smacked the button, unmuting her tunes.
Vocals blasted. The bass pounded. Adrenaline pumped through her veins.
She swerved her ship to the left, right, right, left, avoiding a barrage of projectiles. Sweat beaded on her forehead, dripped down her spine. Missiles burst into color, into vibrant bits of energy all around her vessel. Metal rattled.
Her route became narrower and narrower. Her ability to avoid the missiles decreased. But the Humanoid Alliance forces below her ship thinned also. There were fewer battle machines to target her freighter.
She pulsed her engines, flying fast, fast, slow, fast, slow, slow, and tilted her ship upward, downward. Projectiles shattered the rock walls around her.
“Come on, baby.” Tension stretched across her shoulders. “You can do this. You can—”
The missile bombardment suddenly stopped. It must’ve been deemed too dangerous for the forces positioned on the ground. The Humanoid Alliance also knew they’d have another chance to down her ship.
She’d have to exit the same way.
That would be a challenge. She’d have to fly like the wind to avoid the strikes. But she could do it. She was the best damn freighter pilot in the fuckin’ universe.
That wasn’t a boast. That was the truth.
The rock walls closed in around her. She lowered her freighter and skimmed along the ground. Pebbles sprayed against the undercarriage. The pings were almost musical.
She carefully aligned the vessel’s nose with the opening in the stone before her. Entry into the dormant volcano would be tight. A purely organic pilot couldn’t make it. The systems on her freighter didn’t have the precision to target that small of a gap.
But she wasn’t one hundred percent organic. Her processor-equipped mechanical eye had been specifically designed for tasks like the one she now faced. She enabled sightlines and data on it, focused on her target, and inputted those specs into the control panel.
Her fingers trembled. If she made a mistake, if she was even a breath’s-width out of alignment, she would crash the freighter into the stone around her or plunge her vessel into the sand below her.
Either collision would kill her.
“You have this.” She uttered that encouragement to herself and to her ship. “You’ll make it.”
Metal scraped against hard surface as her wings grazed the rock.
For a moment, she thought she was dead.
But then her ship was free. Open space was all around her.
“Fuckin’ right.” She circled her freighter once, twice around the funnel. That signaled to the locals on the ground she was an ally. An enemy would’ve shot at them.
She lowered her ship to the planet’s surface, donned her goggles, then stalked to the doors and opened them. Warm air swept inside the ship. A massive boom temporarily deafened her.
The floor gyrated under her boots.
“What the fuck?” She rushed down the not-yet-fully-extended ramp and looked around her.
A group of purple humanoids stared with wide eyes in the direction from which she came.
Dread gripped her. She followed the beings’ gazes. Her stomach twisted.
A huge cloud of brown dust concealed the only opening to and from the site.
“The entrance is now filled with rock.” That frustrating truth was relayed in musical tones. The words were spoken in the universal language. “The Humanoid Alliance blew it up. We’re trapped.”
Briella met the newcomer’s gaze.
The female had matching eyes. Both of them were organic. Her skin and hair were a lighter shade of purple than her eyes. Her form was tall and slender, and she was dressed in flowing garments.
She was stunning. The dirt and grime covering her couldn’t conceal her beauty.
No one would ever mistake her for a demon.
The female was also heavily armed. She clasped guns in both of her hands.
They would need more than those weapons to escape their current situation.
“The river once flowed into the space.” Briella turned, scanning the stone walls encircling them. “The water had to flow out somehow.”
“That exit was sealed by rock long before I was born.” The female waved one of her guns at an indention in the stone on the far side of the funnel. “We’ve searched the perimeter for another escape route.” Sadness reflected in her perfect eyes. “There isn’t one.”
They were surrounded by high rock walls. Digging through them or under them would take too long, especially as they had no equipment manufactured for that purpose.
Briella tilted her head back. The funnel was too high, too steep for the locals or for herself to climb.
Up was the only viable path, however. She studied the space. The dormant volcano was wide at the bottom, extremely narrow at the top. But the diameter of the vent was larger than her freighter. “There’s an exit directly above us.”
“Is that a viable exit?” The female gazed upward also. “You didn’t enter that way.”
“It’s the only exit we have.” Briella shrugged. “But it’ll be risky. We could all die.”
“If we stay here, we’ll all die.” The female had reached the same conclusion Briella had. There was nothing but sand and rock and echoes of ancient deaths inside the dormant volcano. “I’ll talk with the others.”
The humanoid floated away. Her tread was soundless. Her gait was level.
“If she could truly hover above the ground, she would’ve gotten her tiny ass out of here.” Briella muttered that reminder under her breath. The female’s beauty unsettled her. “She needs you. She isn’t going to reject you.”
An unnatural rumbling rolled through the warm air.
Trepidation filled her. The Humanoid Alliance troops weren’t waiting for them to starve to death. They were mounting an attack.
“Decide quickly.” Briella yelled that advice at the female’s back.
The Praecipuans looked at her. One male, as tall and slender as the first female, grimaced. A female visibly paled.
Briella touched her goggles. They were in place.
All they’d seen were the scars on her cheeks, her forehead, and her chin. And those had horrified them. She pressed her lips together. Her eyes would cause them to flee.
“What is your name?” The first female stood in the middle of the group. She must be their leader.
Briella hesitated. If she relayed her name, they wouldn’t believe it. It was too beautiful for someone who looked like her. “Folks call me Beast.”
The female blinked once, twice. “I’m Mohini.” She smiled and turned her attention back to the others. Her hands skimmed through the air as she chattered. Her words were too softly spoken for the newcomer to hear.
Briella surveyed the group of beings. They all seemed capable of moving unassisted. Their wounds appeared minor.
Her ship was in rougher shape than they were. She clomped around the vessel, inspecting it.
New scrapes decorated the wings. There was a burn mark on the undercarriage. That was minor damage.
The freighter should hold together on the ascent.
She hoped it would. If—
“We’re going with you.” The female—Mohini—ushered her kind toward the ramp.
“Great.” She would try not to kill them all. “Turn left after you enter. You can use any of the chambers in the back. The bridge, to the right, is off-limits.” That was her space. “Strap yourselves in. This will be a rough trip.”
Mohini translated her words to the others. “We understand.”
Some of the Praecipuans didn’t look at her as they passed. A couple braver souls peered down at her, trying to gaze past her goggles. They wouldn’t see enough to scare them.
Briella waited, quashing the urge to tell them to hurry. They didn’t have all fuckin’ planet rotation.
Once the beings were finally loaded, she retracted the ramp, closed the doors, and returned to the bridge. She plunked her generous ass into the captain’s chair and took off her goggles.
Their escape would require the usage of both her eyes.
She placed her hands on the control panel. The engines continued to hum.
