The Cyborg Next Door

By Bianca D'Arc

Is he really just a heartless machine? When aliens attack, she’ll discover the cyborg secret...

Chiron is a cyborg - a man who has been turned into a machine after tragedy. Common wisdom says he’s just a robot now, with no feelings and no memory of his past life, but his next-door neighbor, Roxy, is starting to suspect that’s not exactly true. He looks at her with desire in his eyes, and she knows there’s a man inside that muscular frame, who feels a very mutual attraction.

She’s trying to earn enough as a mechanic for passage back to Earth, but it’s a long way home and war is on the horizon. When aliens attack the station, the leadership flees, leaving the cyborgs and a bunch of women and children to the not-so-tender mercies of the alien warriors. But the cyborgs have a crazy plan and they won’t leave the innocent behind.

With Roxy’s help, they’ll try to fix the last viable ship and head out for parts unknown. Their journey is fraught with hazards, but if they work together, the humans and cyborgs might just find a way home. Roxy and Chiron will have to put it all on the line to save the others—their safety, their lives...and their hearts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bianca D'Arc
• Release date: Feb 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463957431

Bianca D'Arc

Bianca D’Arc lives on Long Island, in New York. She is the daughter of a Dutch immigrant to the U.S. and a materials scientist who worked on America's space program, including such projects as the lunar module, space shuttle and most of the Apollo missions. She earned a university degree in chemistry, and later, graduate degrees in library science and law. Forsaking the corporate world soon after the terrible events of 9/11/01, she began her writing career in earnest in late 2005. She focuses on the paranormal, sci fi and fantasy genres of romance, and loves creating happy-ever-afters for her characters.

Book preview

In The Stars Romance

The Cyborg Next Door

by

Bianca D’Arc

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright © 2019 Bianca D’Arc

Published by Hawk Publishing, LLC

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.

DEDICATION

Many thanks to Yvette Nemec and the members of my fb fan group for helping me brainstorm the name of the station. You guys are great!

And to my dear old Dad who was in and out of the hospital while this first part of this book was being written. He likes to keep me hopping and he definitely did quite a bit of it last year. Hopefully, Dad will soon be back to his old self and have a much easier year this year.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Excerpt from Storm Bear

About the Author

Other Books by Bianca D’Arc

PROLOGUE

Aboard Eagle Nest Station

Chiron didn’t like what he was seeing. He’d been scanning incoming news reports from all over the sector for the past few cycles, and signs indicated a slow but steady rise in military activity around all jump points, both major and minor. There were only certain places around the galaxy where wormholes could terminate, making the jump from one galaxy to another possible.

There was an ongoing conflict with the jit’suku race, who came from a neighboring galaxy. Once they’d discovered they could infiltrate the Milky Way Galaxy through certain jump points, they’d done their best to come in and take over. Humanity had been fighting against them for years now, pushing back the alien invasion wherever it occurred.

The jump points had been secured with giant lockable rings and massive weapons installations, as well as constant patrols. Any incursions through the jump points without prior authorization were dealt with severely.

Chiron didn’t want more war. He particularly didn’t want it happening near or on the station on which he was currently serving.

He was a cyborg. Although the military thought he was nothing but a robot with human parts, Chiron was a lot more than that. He was careful not to let it show, but he was aware and awake for the first time since he’d been made into a machine. If there was going to be fighting, he’d be among the first troops sent in to the hot zone, so he watched and waited, and talked with the others of his kind about the possibilities.

The Jit’Suku Galaxy

They will be expecting us around the central jump points, and they’ve already proven able to defend those locations, but if we aim for the secondary jump points—the places farther away from their home planet and under less scrutiny—I believe we will be able to gain a strong foothold in their galaxy.

The jit’suku emperor listened to his generals discuss the new battle plan. This new plan was devious, but it just might work. All it needed was his permission to set things in motion.

Did he want war with the humans? Not in particular, but he wanted access to the resources of that galaxy. He needed it to fuel his ever-expanding empire and it was ripe for the picking.

Jit’suku were warriors. If the humans tried to deny them access to their galaxy, they would die. Simple as that.

That thought firmly in mind, the emperor gave the nod.

CHAPTER ONE

Three Cycles Later - Aboard Eagle Nest Station

The boy next door wasn’t a boy. He wasn’t even a man according to some, but Roxy had never felt that way about cyborgs. They’d been born human, but they’d been upgraded, for lack of a better word, for one reason or another. Some were accident victims, brought back to life—or some semblance thereof—by modern technology. Some were felons, forcibly modified by an unforgiving penal system. Most were soldiers who’d been used up too young and brought back with spare parts, their training and temperament too valuable to let die unremarked.

Men with the necessary skills were too precious a commodity to let even one pass on to the next life before he’d served his time for the good of the human race. It was a harsh rule, but one that had been implemented early in humanity’s expansion into the galaxy because of what had been found just beyond the sol system.

Aliens. And lots of them.

An entire empire of humanoid beings who wanted to come in and take over now that the inhabitants of Earth had joined the rest of the alien races out among the stars. The jit’suku were devastatingly good fighters, and their technology was far ahead of Earth’s, but so far, humanity had been able to hold its own, keeping the conflict to the galactic rim, where a limited number of jump points allowed quick travel from one galaxy to another.

Eagle Nest Station was positioned near one of the lesser jump point terminals—aptly called Jump Point Eagle—because this area had the best view of the famous Eagle Nebula and its Pillars of Creation. The risk of living and working on the station had been categorized as low in comparison to some of the other stations near jump points. Roxy wasn’t thrilled being so close to potential trouble, but she was down on her luck and had ended up here through no fault of her own.

A ship’s engineer by trade, Roxy had signed on for a ten-year contract with Captain Jeffers, on his lightly crewed trader. When he’d put the moves on Roxy soon after departure from Earth, she’d literally had to fight the man off. She’d broken his arm, and things had gotten frosty really fast when they put in at a far-flung mining outpost.

He’d left her in port without any of her gear. She’d only had the clothes on her back and the credit chip she’d been hiding on her person since the trouble with him began. She’d been half afraid he’d take his revenge at some point, so she’d been walking around armed and wearing as much of her stuff as she could reasonably get away with, but she’d lost a very expensive and top-of-the-line EVA suit along with most of her tools when Jeffers had sailed without her. The bastard.

Roxy had been able to barter her skills for a place to sleep at the mining outpost. The people there were a little rough, but basically good folks, and they’d been glad of her assistance once they found out she was an experienced engineer. She’d spent a few months there, fixing every piece of machinery they had back to factory specs—or as close as she could get it with the materials at hand.

When the next freighter had come through, she’d bartered for passage. Unfortunately, that ship had been headed to the Eagle jump point with a quick stop at Eagle Nest Station. Roxy had opted to get off at the station where she could try her luck getting passage back to Earth, or hooking up with a better ship and a new job. Better that than staying at the outpost for who knew how much longer hoping for a better ride.

She’d arrived on Eagle Nest a few weeks before with few credits to her name. She’d found work, of sorts, in the maintenance bay, doing odd jobs, but the station had a full complement of engineers, and Roxy was more of an expert in ships that went places, not so much with stations that stayed mostly in the same place all the time.

Being frugal, she had secured lodgings in the low-rent part of the station, on one of the outermost rings, near a rumbly mech section. It was close to her work, since she was assigned to the maintenance area attached to that mech section, but most humans preferred to live on the inner rings where the food services and shopping concourses were.

Roxy’s neighbors were mostly cyborgs. She didn’t mind that too much. She had an affinity for machines and as long as they kept to themselves and left her alone, she was cool. They were specialized versions of the gear she worked on every day, after all, and most humans believed nothing of the man remained after the cybertronic control systems were introduced into the brain stem during the cyborginazation process.

Roxy hadn’t questioned what she’d been told outright—that the men who became cyborgs lost their humanity. To do so would have put her job in jeopardy. Besides, she didn’t have any contact with the man-machines in her routine work day. There was no reason for her to think too much about it, though she had always thought privately that cyborgs were people—or, at least, had been people—who deserved the same respect as any other being.

Of course, she’d been accused of being naïve before. As far as the rest of humanity was concerned, cyborgs lost their citizenship