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“This was your idea from the beginning. We signed on because you promised us an easy assignment with a big payday for almost no risk.” Sutherland gestured around them. “Then we get sent to the ass-end of nowhere and aren’t even allowed to set foot in the one and only town on the whole planet.”
“Shut up. You’re ruining everything.” Douglas sounded more like a toddler having a tantrum than a grown man.
“I figure this is my chance to get out of the shit you got us into.” He looked over to Rin and shrugged. “I’ll cooperate. You want to know the details? I’ll give them to you. Someone out there wanted those birds of yours and they were going to pay us a fortune to get them. It was all planned, but then we got sent here and the lieutenant had to figure out a way to make it right with the client or we were all going to get the blame.” Sutherland shrugged. “I don’t know who they are, but they’re dangerous. Some of the things they threatened to do if we didn’t come through…” The soldier shuddered.
“Shut up. Shut up! Shut up! They’ll kill us all if you keep talking, you idiot!”
“Who will?” Axe demanded.
“Fraxx you, machine.”
Axe removed his boot from Douglas’s chest, bent down, and grabbed him by the front of his uniform. Then Axe hauled him into the air so Douglas’s feet hung in the air. “Want to try that again?”
“Fraxx off.”
Rin didn’t see Douglas pull the second blaster. It seemed to materialize in his hand between one heartbeat and the next. Axe didn’t seem to notice it either.
At the same time, Amun dropped out of the sky and streaked like a meteor straight at Douglas’s head. The collision stunned everyone—the hawk, the human, and the cyborg.
Amun crashed to the ground, too dazed to pull himself out of the dive while Douglas tried to wipe the blood flowing into his eyes from his newly lacerated scalp.
Axe looked away from his prisoner to check on Amun, and in that moment Douglas raised his weapon… and Rin fired.
The man’s head vanished in a pinkish cloud of vaporized tissue. Rin trained her weapon on the nearest soldier, but all he did was raise his hands and take a step back. The others did the same thing. No one seemed overly upset that she’d just killed their commanding officer. Maybe they didn’t like him that much after all.
Axe snapped his head around to stare at the dead body dangling from his hand.
“Nice shot, sunshine!” he called over. Then he dropped the corpse onto the ground and hurried over to Amun.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
Hera sent her a pulse of affirmation at the same moment Axe held up a fist, thumb up. “He’ll be fine.”
Rin exhaled and suddenly had to plant a hand on the side of the sled to stop her knees from giving out. They’d done it. She had no idea how to make sure that the hawks would never be exploited or abused again, but she knew they’d find a way to make that happen, too.
She and Axe were a team, and so much more. She was his sunshine… and he was her everything.
EPILOGUE
Axe sat in a beam of autumn sunshine, watching the psy-hawks as they soared in lazy circles overhead. Rin lay beside him, her head and neck resting on his thigh.
“Do you think they’re as happy as we are?” she asked, pointing a finger at the sky.
He chuckled. “I know they are. Amun keeps sending me the psychic version of smiling emojis. It’s annoying as hell, and he knows it. Damned bird.”
These days what little grumbling he did was all for show. Over the last few months he’d come to realize that he’d grumbled mostly to have a reason to speak aloud, even if no one else was around to hear him. It was one of the ways he’d tried to stave off feelings of loneliness, but that wasn’t necessary anymore. He had Rin and the hawks to talk to, and Amun was always just a thought away.
They even had visitors from time to time. He’d discovered that cooking for other people was gratifying in ways he couldn’t articulate, and he’d come to enjoy their dinner parties. But only once a month.
Despite that rule, Rin had somehow talked him into hosting an open house of sorts. The entire colony was invited to drop by for a weekend-long social to learn more about the psy-hawks. She’d even convinced him to put some of his work on display. He’d only agreed when she promised that Anya and the staff at the Bar None tavern had offered to cater the event.
Mostly, he’d agreed because it would give the hawks a chance to meet more of the colonists. So far, only Amun and Hera had bonded with anyone. Rin hoped to change that.
For now, all eight of the birds stayed with them. Amun and Hera shared the workshop while he’d built the others an open-style mews with multiple roosts and access points. They were free to come and go as they pleased, which was a far cry from their previous existence.
It took some time for them to adjust to their new reality. Axe understood all too well what it was like to transition from captivity and slavery to a life of freedom. It took even longer for the four hawks Douglas had put into cryo-pods. When they’d boarded the shuttle to track down the missing subjects, they’d found the two that had been taken that morning and the two the lieutenant claimed had been left behind. Rin had been both heartbroken and furious at the discovery.
All four had short-term health issues from being placed in cryo without any of the standard preparations and procedures, but Rin had diligently nursed them back to full health. Now they were recovered, it was time for the birds to meet the rest of the colony’s citizens.
