Page 34 of Darken
“I will do everything I know to help her,” Kydel assured him. “It could be days or months before we know if she’ll make it. You will go out of your mind if you stand watch over her. I’ll send you the link so you can remotely watch. Help the people you came to rescue.”
Darken stared at the medic, barely comprehending. He looked at Gina, feeling utterly helpless, then at Kydel for several seconds, then nodded and stood. With one last longing gaze at his mate, he strode from the shuttle, and it lifted off as soon as he was clear.
The wolves were still there pacing. Stopping as the shuttle left with Gina, they all stopped and howled plaintively. Darken stared at the shuttle until it disappeared into the clouds.
Tamping down his emotions, Darken took a breath and expelled it, praying to the Universe that he would hold her again one day sooner than later.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Let’s try this again,” said Darken, stepping into the holding area of the Quonset hut. “I am Federation Ranger Darken Wolf. “I am here to release you and arrange for you to go home.”
He had found a bolt cutter for the old-fashioned padlocks on the cages and started cutting them off. Within minutes all of them were opened, and the abductees moved into the open area between the two rows.
He asked for a few volunteers to pass out food and water from the supply room since there was only room inside for three people. The rest formed a line to be served as Darken explained that they had to wait for the hostiles to be transported before they could leave.
Darken stopped to check on the prisoners, then went outside to check on the cyborg he’d stunned with the blaster at full power. He was breathing and in no distress, but Darken couldn’t be sure he wasn’t faking unconsciousness. He could only tell that this cyborg was a converted natural.
They were normal humans born naturally from a human womb. Most conversions were made due to catastrophic war injuries, and their neural interface and internal CPU identified them on the cyborg network. Not all of them were honorable, and they were recruited by eastern overlords as enforcers.
The hovercraft Stockman’s team had used to transport the abductees was only large enough to carry twenty people at a time. The abductees were taken from a dozen different towns in the southwest territories. When Darken informed Jolt Somber, he sent two volunteers with other transports to help get them home.
Getting cyborgs to volunteer for such a duty was easy because it gave them an added chance to find their genetic mates. None of the females in the southwest territory were in the database yet.
With everything set in motion, Darken finally got back outside to Queen, who gave him a sympathetic whine as he hunkered down next to her to check her injury.
“The wound certainly looks better,” he said to her. “But I think you need to rest overnight before you can travel with the pack.”
“We can’t just leave her here in the open.” He could almost hear Gina say those words.
“You and your pack can shelter in the building after we get everyone out.”
He was stroking the wolf queen’s head when a noise caught his attention. Darken jumped up and started toward the Quonset when the flyer lifted into the air. “Fuck!”
The cyborg, working with the traffickers, was escaping. Darken had overestimated how long he would be unconscious after he blasted him. He’d had no other way to secure him. Standing, he watched the flyer shoot off eastward. It was either stun him again or drug him… He had no drugs. The rogue was probably playing possum, waiting for Darken to walk away.
“I should have killed him,” Darken muttered. Then and there, he decided what he needed to do.
“Brother, I need your help,” Darken pinged Blaze Savage through their network. “They shot Gina with an ion rifle, and we don’t know if she will survive. She’s up on Nemesis under Medic Matix’s care.”
“And you want to kill someone….”
“I want to kill them all! …And Devlin White slowly. He is behind the abductions in my territory. One of his men shot Gina and our wolf, Queen. This gang is taking locals and trafficking them to the Eastern Overlords.”
“We can’t go killing Eastern Overlords when they aren’t posing an immediate threat.”
“I need to do something. Those bastards need to learn they can’t come out here and take our people.”
“The damned bureaucrats are still haggling over getting back people the Overlords stole. We must locate the people they took before we go in there.”
“We can send my drone cams.” Darken told him. “I’m done with them here. I’ll send them out tonight.
“Under no circumstances do you discuss this excursion we are planning with Commander Dark.”
Blaze warned.
“So, he has deniability.”
“Yes.”
