Programmed To Protect (The Tau Cetus Chronicles) by Jenna Ives Read Free Book Online

sycophant’s eager escort.
    Rhean pushed his way through the hinged doors, and Wyatt noted that every programmer in the room was in some stage of work on an individual soldier. Some robots had their face panels removed while others were connected by cables to computers. A dozen stations, a dozen soldiers. A model of streamlined efficiency.
    Rhean knocked once on the black door that led to Titus Veraine’s personal lab. Without waiting for an answer, he pushed open the door and entered the room. Wyatt followed him in.
    Titus Veraine looked up from his work station, then pushed his chair back from his computer keyboard. “Agent Wyatt. Welcome back.”
    Wyatt briefly noted that the soldier connected to Veraine’s computer was a dead ringer for yesterday’s robot. Then again, they were all dead ringers for each other. By design.
    Veraine pinched the bridge of his nose, apparently exhausted. He stood to unhook the cable from the side of the soldier’s head. “Rhean, this one’s ready. Will you escort it to the storage area?”
    “But…” The wiry-haired man looked at Wyatt. “Mr. Carron said… I’m supposed to—”
    “It’s fine,” Veraine interrupted. “I’ll take care of agent Wyatt.”
    “But—”
    “Rhean,” Veraine snapped, then eased his tone. “I said it’s fine. Don’t worry.”
    He waved a hand toward the soldier, and an unhappy-looking Loris Rhean took the robot’s arm and led it from the room.
    Veraine turned to Wyatt. “Pardon my temper. I’ve been working on that one for the last four hours straight.”
    “Four hours?”
    “Yes. It takes longer to program them than it does to actually make them. Then again, their value is not only in their brute strength, but also in their advanced ability to follow orders. They have to be able to adjust, even on the fly, in case things change during a particular situation or battle.”
    Wyatt raised an eyebrow. “That kind of technology….”
    “Is complicated. Still, as I mentioned yesterday, this is nothing like the complexity of programming a Beautiful Doll. They were a work of art. A masterpiece. Our little miracle.” Veraine gave Wyatt a small smile.
    Was that regret Wyatt saw there? Had Beautiful Dolls been Veraine’s life’s work, and programming homogenous robot soldiers a disappointing step down? Wyatt had certainly never seen anything as technologically impressive as Ginger.
    He purposely stopped himself from throwing a glance toward Veraine’s utility closet, but it reminded him of a question. “You said yesterday that Beautiful Dolls can’t lie.”
    “They can’t.”
    “So… isn’t that a bad quality for a robot soldier? One of them could potentially spill military secrets if captured by an enemy.”
    Veraine let out a small bark of a laugh. “First of all, these soldiers will never be taken. Do you think we’d let this kind of technology fall into enemy hands? No. We can activate any robot’s built-in self-destruct sequence with one stroke of a computer key. Secondly, they have no vocal chords. Artificial mouths, yes, but no vocal chords. They can’t speak.”
    No vocal chords? Wyatt immediately thought of Ginger’s sultry voice, and knew it would be a damned shame if she were silenced forever.
    “But speaking of mouths…” Veraine began.
    Wyatt scowled a warning. You’d damn well better not be referring to yesterday’s blow job…
    Veraine ignored the look. “I had to send Rhean away,” he said, leaning an inch closer toward Wyatt, “because there’s something I want to tell you. But it’s… private.”
    Wyatt’s scowl faded. “Private?”
    “Yes.” Veraine walked over to his lab door, and shut it firmly. Then he returned to stand in front of Wyatt, and lowered his voice. “Mr. Carron has a… secondary… plan for the robot soldiers’ deployment to Terra Acer. A personal one.”
    Wyatt felt his jaw clench. It would be just like Anson Carron to have an ulterior agenda. During the Callex case, Carron’s