02 Dragon - Capturing Cara by S. E. Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

her. A good aerobic dance step could work the heart, legs, and mind just as well. She was lucky she had her iPhone with her. She had over two thousand songs in her playlist including songs from the 1980s. The Electric Slide was a great disco song. She had even programmed the disco ball effect and included some fog. She was trying to stick with small stuff until she understood things a little better. The translator the doctor had implanted with a big help. It was weird at first but no weirder than everything being translated through the symbiosis. She had learned all kinds of cool things since she had figured out their computer language codes weren’t much different from what she had learned in school. Symba, Cara’s nickname for the symbiosis, had become her constant companion and her partner-in-crime. Cara had finally figured out the symbiosis was actually a creation of trillions of living nanobots forming together into a type of hive. Each symbiosis seemed to encode on a warrior and his dragon when the infants were taken to the joining grounds, a sacred place only known to the leader of the Valdire.
     
    “Accept code.” Cara said just as the door to the living quarters she had been staying in opened. Cara jumped in surprise as she hadn’t been expecting anyone.

    Trelon stood in the doorway to his living quarters staring in disbelief at the mess that had once been called his private domain. Wires ran across the floor from the wall unit… where was his wall unit? Trelon wondered staring at the empty hole where it had been… to his dining table. Parts, wires, and circuit boards were scattered on just about every available surface.
     
    “What have you done to my living quarters?” Trelon asked in horror. He started to enter the room when his foot hit something. Looking down his eyes narrowed. Was that his clothing sanitizer? His gaze jumped to another part he thought he recognized. His vidcom system was in a million pieces. When he saw the parts cloner he had practically had to fight a Sarafin warrior to the death for at his last visit to their galaxy, he almost started to cry. It was totally dismantled.

    “You…” Trelon began looking helplessly around his living space. “You…”

    “Yes?” Cara asked innocently looking around at all the treasures she had found. “You guys have some of the coolest stuff here. Look at this! I found it in the back of a panel in the other room. It plays some type of videos or something I think. I figured if it was in the back behind the clothes it wasn’t being used so I took it apart so I could use some of the components to….”

    Trelon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she held up what was left of his PVC, better known as a Personal Virtual Companion. All warriors had one, especially for long voyages with no females. Yes, it played video. It played thousands of virtual videos that made long, lonely voyages possible and she had taken his apart. He had spent years, hundreds of years, programming the videos so they would be just right for him. There had been one for any mood, any desire and any craving, and now…gone, all gone. A good PVC was prized above just about anything but a true mate since it was as close to one as many warriors got. A great one could get a man killed in his sleep. Trelon’s PVC had been two steps, maybe even three beyond phenomenal, which is why he had kept it hidden in a secret panel in the back of his clothing storage.
     
    The missing sleep cycles, combined with the stress of rebuilding the transporter room, dealing with his dragon’s pouting, and his brother’s demands were nothing compared to finding his one safe haven destroyed and his prized possessions in pieces. Trelon briefly closed his eyes so he could focus on not strangling the female who was staring at him so innocently.

    Opening his eyes, Trelon muttered darkly, “I am going to use the cleansing unit, if it is still in one piece, then going to bed. DO. NOT. DESTROY. ANY.