B Cubed #3 Borg Read Online Free PDF

it?”
    She wanted him to say yes, of course, where
there was a will there’d be a way. But he held his piece again and her heart
sank.
    “Why didn’t this come up at the summit?” The
fact that all the factions would perish if the planet died seemed like
something they should have been made aware of. Was there any point to calling a
truce of they were all doomed anyway?
    “It’s a relatively new worry and nothing’s been
proven yet. That’s what I intend to find out. I’m sure the accord will grant
all factions full disclosure. If she is dying, the only way any of us will
survive is if we all work together.”
    Sage thought about her uncle’s prejudice against
the Bred and the Borg. She thought about the people in the hallway that had
seen her off, uncaring as to her fate.  About the men who’d hurt her. Banding
together wasn’t something the Born did. She hugged Lily to her and the little
creature yelped in protest.
    “God help us all,” Sage breathed.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
                Dayen
mentally swore as he took the third beacon reading. All of them relayed the
same information. The rocks of the crust were cooler than they had been a year
ago, and almost half the temperature of what they’d been two years ago. 
                “This
doesn’t mean anything, not really.” he told Sage, who stared wide eyed at his
data. “We’ve only tested rock on the dark half of the planet so far.”
                “What
other information do you need?” Beautiful blue eyes fixed on his face.
    He could lose himself so easily in those eyes.
Dayen forced himself to refocus on the tunneler controls and on inputting the
new code. She was still nervous about him, both Dayen her cyborg fiancé and
Berrick, the big man piloting the tunneler. Staring at her would only compound
her fear.
     Her thoughts were less frantic than they’d been
when he first told her about his mission.  As he picked up her unique
frequency, he was also practicing blocking them out, making his mind immune to
her innermost thoughts. It was an exercise Aunt Cass had taught him, slowly
erecting a barrier that would eventually be impervious to her projections. He’d
never gotten the hang of it but then again, he’d never been so motivated to get
it right.
    “A sample from the mantle perhaps.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Another layer of the Earth. The one directly
below the crust.”
    “How many layers are there?”
    Dayen enjoyed her curiosity. She was sharp and
attentive, inquisitive like a child but not overly pushy, allowing him to
consider the data before he responded. The perfect student, she possessed a
genuine thirst for knowledge. For every question he answered Sage had two more
ready to go. Her eagerness to learn overrode her fretting because she’d moved
to the seat beside him to observe his testing.
    Dayen held up his hand and ticked off the
layers. “The crust, the mantel and the core.”
    “The crust is where the Born colonies are?”
    “It’s where we all live. In some places the
crust is over forty miles thick. The cyborg colony is just closer to the mantle
because the mantle is warmer.”
    She absorbed that for a minute. “Why is it
warmer?”
    “It’s superheated rock, liquid in form. It’s
also the thickest layer of the planet. Have you ever seen a volcano erupt?”
    She shook her head. “What’s a volcano?”
    Dayen drummed his fingers on the console as the
tunneler rumbled along. The Born did their children no favors by keeping them
ignorant to the world around them. Sage’s keen mind could be an asset to him,
but first he had to educate her to the way things worked.
    Another reading from a thermal beacon wouldn’t
give him much more to work with than he’d already obtained. Decided, he input
the new coordinates. “I’ll show you. You’ll want to take off that dress
though.”
    Blue eyes went wide and a spike of terror
pierced his shield. He winced in pain and