Blown Away (Cyborg Force Book 1) Read online

  Bandit and I ran for the cabin.

  Chapter Two

  Breeze

  I stowed my silver sample case next to my carryall on the rear seat of the transport.

  “Don’t forget the most important thing.” Martin handed me an insulated mug.

  “My coffee! Thanks. I’d hate to leave that behind.” I stuck the cup in the holder.

  He leaned against the RTC. “You’re getting a late start. Sure you don’t want to wait until tomorrow to leave?”

  “And let the boss think I’m slacking off? No way,” I joked.

  He winked. “I won’t tell.” Martin was the boss, the western site director of Geo-Tech. He’d also caused my late start, having called a mandatory staff meeting, which had dragged on for three butt-busting hours. Some informative departmental analyses had been presented, but I could have accessed the reports from the eastern office. However, staff meetings were his line in the sand; he was a stickler when it came to attendance.

  Still, he allowed us to do our jobs without too much interference and awarded credit where credit was due. I’d had worse bosses, so I could tolerate a few annoying meetings. Besides, Martin had done me a huge favor once, and I owed him more than I could repay.

  He removed his glasses and held them up, his puppy-dog eyes squinting at the lenses, which were beginning to cloud. “I need new glasses again. I swear I go through lenses at least every six months.” He shook his head. “Damn sand.”

  “That wouldn’t happen if you wore your goggles more.”

  “I know. But goggles over glasses are a pain.”

  Extremely nearsighted, Martin wasn’t a candidate for corrective eye surgery, which forced him to wear spectacles. Glass, windows—any kind of transparent material—clouded over under the abrasive assault of the particulates in the air. With a sigh, he donned his specs and adjusted them atop the air filter covering his nose. “You may not get to the eastern office until the day after tomorrow.”

  “I wasn’t going to point it out, but since you said it…” I fidgeted, anxious to be off.

  “Sorry.” He had the grace to sound rueful. “Stop at a wayside station and expense another night to Geo-Tech if you have to.”

  “Oh, you can count on that. I’d better get going, or I’ll be expensing a third night. I’ll check in when I get to Stadt.” I slipped into the passenger cab and strapped in, but before the door could close, Martin swooped in close.

  I steeled myself not to recoil. It’s okay. It’s okay. Deep breaths. He’s not doing anything.

  “Got your coordinates plugged in?” he asked.

  It wasn’t his fault he’d freaked me out by violating my personal space. Nobody could guess how wide the circle was. Martin was being Martin, acting like a mother hen guarding her chicks, despite the fact that, at forty-two, he was three years younger than me.

  “Programmed it myself when the fleet garage delivered the vehicle this morning.” Ordering my racing heart rate to settle, I keyed in the passcode to activate the RTC and its autopilot program. The nav screen lit up.

  “You’re set, then. Stay in the vehicle. Don’t get out for anything.”

  “I’m not getting out until I reach the first way station.”

  “But if you do get out, wear your air filter mask and goggles. Do as I say, not as I do.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll use protection.”

  He blushed red all the way to his ears. “I know how scientists are. Something catches your attention, and you can’t resist investigating. Remember, curiosity killed the cat.”

  If not for curiosity, science wouldn’t exist. Medicines wouldn’t exist. Space would not have been explored. Sajave wouldn’t have been colonized. Geo-Tech wouldn’t have been incorporated, and suits like Martin wouldn’t have jobs. But I held my tongue. “On that happy note…”

  He tapped the roof of the RTC and stepped back.

  The door closed, sealing me inside. I flashed a thumbs-up, and the Rugged Terrain Craft rolled down the street. I pulled off my air filter mask and goggles and tossed them onto the seat. A rear cam showed Martin watching my departure like a hover-parent waving as his kid left for college.

  The RTC turned the corner and veered around a sweeper bot clearing the street. Bots ran 24/7 because maintaining passable roadways was a Sisyphean task. A seventy-foot high alabaster-smooth wall encompassing Città kept out most of the sand. But during the dust storms, forget it. Streets transformed into dunes within hours, and it took weeks for dozers and bots to clear them again.

  Even on the clearest days, like today, you didn’t dare venture outdoors without an air filter. Over time, ever-present particulate matter would damage lungs. And if you expected to be outside for more than a few minutes, you donned protective eyewear, too.

  During storms, you stayed inside.

  Pragmatic urban planners had laid out Città’s arrow-straight streets in a perfect-and-boring grid pattern. Function and ease of navigation trumped aesthetics. Buildings rose no higher than six stories to remain shielded behind the protective walls. Still, all the windows had clouded over. When you were inside, it was like looking through frosted glass. Not being able to see out bothered some people, triggering claustrophobia. Some left the planet because of it.

  It calmed me.

  Not being able to see out, meant nobody could see in. The cocooning effect of the frosted glass enabled me to pretend dangers didn’t exist. The illusion of safety enabled me to function.

  The transport slowed as it approached Città’s main entrance. The gate peeled back, the transport’s hover-mode kicked in, and the vehicle lifted off the ground and exited the city into the dunes.

  Rolling hills of shifting sand covered the entire planet, which was about the size of Mars. Sajave, originally designated X2i7, drew its name from the Sahara and Mojave deserts on Earth. When the government decided to colonize, they hastily squished the two names together and dubbed X2i7 Sajave. They’d been equally quick and unimaginative in naming the five population centers after the word “city” in different languages: Città, Stadt, Ciudad, Miestas, and Ville.

  People had to have a huge amount of pioneer grit and gumption to settle on Sajave. Or they had to be crazy. Or hiding from something.

  With a hum, the transport picked up speed, and I watched Città grow smaller and smaller until it vanished, and then I was surrounded by a sea of blindingly white sand. Ever shifting, yet always the same, the dunes were fascinating and mind-numbing. The contrast of pure white against a cobalt sky reminded me of an abstract painting, the top half one color, the bottom half another color—representing the duality of humanity or some other nonsense. Still, I could stare at the dunes for hours—and go mad doing so.

  Martin was right about scientists being curious. That’s why I’d become an astrogeologist. Earth had few mysteries left to solve, but the universe offered a whole new unexplored frontier, and Sajave had beckoned. To borrow the words of a statesman of yore, Sajave presented “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

  Besides its mysteries, or maybe because of them, the planet offered a place to hide. The best place to hide was the place no one wanted to go. Nobody wanted to live in a sandbox.

  Total population among all five cities had just broken the one hundred K mark, but getting it to that number had taken a massive effort and gazillions of dollars in government incentives and bribes.

  When officials discovered the deterrent the sand presented to colonization, the government tried to do what humans had been doing for eons: control the environment.

  On Earth, urban developers dammed and rerouted rivers, drained swamps, irrigated deserts, leveled mountains, cut trees to pave the way for roads and buildings, and seeded clouds to change the weather.

  On Sajave, they bulldozed and built walls and barriers. But the sand resisted human management. It had a will of its own, and there was so damn much of it.

  So why didn’t the government wise up, cut its losses, and abandon Sajave?

  For one thing, “habitable” planets capable of supporting human life are actually quite rare. A planet can’t be too hot or too cold. It must have water—which Sajave had in abundance. Oceans of fresh water flowed in the underground aquifer. A planet had to have a breathable oxygen-rich atmosphere, which technically Sajave did, once you mitigated for the harmful airborne sand particulates.

  But the real reason they persisted with colonization was because the effort was a taxpayer-funded government program. Have you ever known government to halt a program? “Well, this didn’t work. Let’s stop it and try something else,” said no bureaucrat ever. Nope, when a program proved to be a colossal waste of money, pouring more money into it was the only option.

  So, the government awarded Geo-Tech great gobs of cash to figure out what could be done with the sand. And if Geo-Tech passed on a portion of the windfall to me in the form of an exorbitant salary, heck, I’d take it.

  I got paid to study sand.

  After four years, I’d recently had a major breakthrough. So mind-blowing, I hardly dared to believe it myself, so I damn sure wasn’t going to share it with anyone yet. I might be a scientist, but I believed in the power of a jinx.

  Not until I had irrefutable evidence to support my hypothesis would I report my findings.

  Hence the trip to the eastern Geo-Tech office in Stadt. They’d received a new electronic analyzer. On order, ours had gotten lost in the supply chain somewhere. Mostly on my say-so—because I’d only given him the sketchiest details—Martin had worked out a deal with the other office, whereby I would be “on loan” to them for their projects, while sneaking in my own studies using their equipment.

  I couldn’t wait to get started.

  I unbuckled and twisted around to snag my wo
rk tablet from my bag. After booting it up, I keyed in my secret code to access my preliminary data. I scrolled through the raw numbers with still-disbelieving eyes. I glanced at my sample case and then at the dunes. The transport’s speed gave the optical illusion the hills were moving.

  The implications of my discovery were incredible—literally unbelievable. I’d doubted my own data at first, certain I’d made an error in testing or the phenomena I’d noted were weird, random anomalies.

  My heart raced now as I perused the data for the umpteenth time. Didn’t every scientist secretly wish to unlock the mysteries of the universe? If my findings were correct, the scientific community, Geo-Tech, the government, even the average lay person would be blown away. What I’d discovered was big.

  So huge, the name Breeze O’Day would be noted in the annals of science alongside Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Ada Lovelace, which would be amazing, awesome, and…problematic. The recognition would be the best thing to happen to me—and potentially the absolute worst. Another reason for secrecy. I had yet to figure out a solution to the conundrum. How to have my cake and eat it, too.

  In the dark of night, when the wind howled, I considered pretending I never found what I had. But as a scientist, I couldn’t not pursue my discovery—even if it caused me grief later.

  But I didn’t need to worry about it yet. Stop obsessing!

  I stowed the Geo-Tech tablet in my bag, dragged out my personal one loaded with books, and reached for my coffee. Way stations were few and far between, so I’d only filled the tankard halfway to prevent me from drinking too much and having to dash behind a dune. Geo-Tech had surprisingly good coffee in its cantina—although maybe not such a surprise since the company tried to keep workers happy in hopes of retaining them. It worked. At least with me. I could be bought for a ridiculously high salary and a great cup of joe.

  I took a big gulp and made a face. Ugh. Not today though. They’d switched to a different blend. Why did people try to fix what wasn’t broken?

  I opened one of the books, but the story didn’t hold me, so I closed it out, set the tablet aside, and turned my attention to the scenery, while sipping my less-than-stellar coffee. I squinted through windows polarized to cut the glare. The dunes seemed to ebb and flow, moving across the planet like slow-moving water. A mirage.

  Wasn’t it?

  I set my cup in the holder and let my fingers race over the control pad, to halt the transport. After the RTC set down and stopped moving, I peered at the dunes. They were rippling. It wasn’t my imagination. Must be pretty windy out there.

  I considered getting out of the vehicle for a closer look but remembered Martin’s admonition to stay in the vehicle. After taking another big gulp of coffee, I restarted the transport. It lifted off and zoomed through the air again.

  It didn’t take long before the gentle rocking of the RTC and the undulating movements of the dunes lulled me into a state of relaxation. My breathing slowed, and my eyelids grew heavy. I had a long journey ahead of me. A catnap would help to pass the time. I eased my seat into a slight recline and slipped into oblivion.

  * * * *

  The splatter of rain hitting the rooftop and windows jolted me awake. Rain? My groggy brain struggled to comprehend. Where am I? I shook my head and tried to move but found myself strapped to the seat of a vehicle being tossed to and fro in a sea of white…

  Sajave!

  I worked for Geo-Tech, and I was traveling to the Stadt office. Outside the vehicle, an impenetrable fog obscured the dunes. Whiteout! Shit!

  Buffeted by fierce wind, the transport jerked and bounced and would have bashed me against the door if I hadn’t been buckled in. Untethered, my sample case and luggage jittered around in the back. My stomach roiled with the roller-coaster movement and the awareness I was in deep shit. Every other sandstorm had been witnessed from the safety of my apartment, further shielded by the city’s barricade.

  How long had I been asleep? Hopefully I was close to a way station where I could wait out the storm. I couldn’t see anything through the sand beating at the transport. My stomach jolted as another strong gust shook the vehicle. I clung to the armrests with a white-knuckled grip.

  If grit got into the ports and clogged the transport’s power unit, the vehicle would stall out. I’d be screwed then. I had to get to a way station asap.

  Please, don’t be far away. With shaking fingers, I accessed the nav system. The screen was blank, showing nothing except a blinking dot representing my vehicle.

  “That can’t be right.” Stars designated cities; triangles represented way stations. There were no stars or triangles on the screen. I zoomed out. There were no stars or triangles within hundreds of miles of the blinking dot. If the nav system had gone haywire, I was screwed with a capital shit. How would I get to a way station?

  Another gust of wind grabbed the transport, and then I jumped as a small dust devil whirled into the side of the RTC. Don’t hurt me. Please, don’t hurt me. It almost seemed as if the transport was under siege. Heart hammering, hands shaking, I zoomed in and out on the map.

  If the system could be believed, I had veered hundreds of miles off course. Impossible. I’d typed the coordinates myself, double-checked them, and previewed the route. And even if the RTC had been knocked off course, how could I have gotten so far away? I hadn’t been traveling for long.

  Unless…how long had I been asleep?

  I checked the chronometer. “Four hours?” I’d slept for four hours?

  And I was still heading in the wrong direction. I corrected the coordinates, setting the nearest way station as my new destination. The transport changed course, but the situation remained dire. I was hours away from shelter, and I couldn’t trust the RTC system. What if it glitched again?

  Maybe the storm will blow over.

  A hysterical giggle bubbled out of my throat. A storm this ferocious wouldn’t blow over anytime soon. As if to punctuate my hunch, another gust grabbed the transport and shook it violently. Don’t fail, don’t fail, don’t fail, I prayed for the RTC to keep going. They were stalwart vehicles with an excellent tri-level filtration system, but they weren’t intended to run in conditions like this.

  The storm fired sand at the windows, hitting hard and loud. What if the glass imploded? Hurricanes and tornadoes on Earth shattered windows and tore off roofs. Composite microfibers reinforced the glass in the RTC, but could the windows withstand battering for hours?

  I found my air filter mask on the floor and put it on then dug out my protective eyewear and donned it, too.

  Battling the fierce winds, the transport was making little headway toward the way station. It seemed to be flying in place. Sending out a distress call wouldn’t do any good; a rescue team couldn’t venture out in a storm like this.

  My stomach knotted with fear. Would it be better to forge ahead or land and shelter in the vehicle until the storm blew over?

  It had to blow over. Didn’t it?

  Before I could reach a decision, a massive, whirling tornado at least two stories tall and wide grabbed the transport and flung it high in the sky, flipping the RTC upside down. The vehicle spun like a horrible carnival ride, whirling round and round, plastering me against the seat. Ohgodohgodohgod. I clung to the safety straps. I’m going to die.

  The storm roared and shrieked, and then the door was ripped open. A gale of sand blasted me, scouring my skin, stinging through layers of clothing. I screamed, covering my head with my hands. Everything not bolted or tied down whirled in the cab. The wind grabbed me, threatening to suck me out of the cab.

  I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

  Something hard and heavy slammed into my head, and I blacked out.

  Chapter Three

  Tack

  I hunkered down beside Bandit, who was cowering under the dining table. “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay.” I stroked his head. He licked my hand but continued to tremble. “It’s okay, Bandit. It’s okay.” I couldn’t hear the storm through the reinforced, foot-thick, noise-baffling cabin walls, but he could. His sensitive doggy ears could pick up frequencies I could not. Some cyborgs had enhanced hearing, but that wasn’t one of my mods.