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

“Fine.”
    Rhean knocked once on Veraine’s lab door, then pushed it open. As expected, Veraine was working on yet another generic robot soldier. He looked up when the two men entered the room.
    “Ah, agent Wyatt. Welcome back.”
    Veraine waved an obviously impatient hand in Rhean’s direction, and, just like that, the clownish assistant was dismissed. With disbelieving eyes, Rhean looked from Veraine to Wyatt, scowled, and then slunk from the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
    Wyatt watched him go gratefully.
    Veraine stood to disconnect the cable from the side of the robot soldier’s head. “You’re just in time. This is it. The end of the lot. Number five thousand. I never thought we’d meet the Council’s deadline, but we have.”
    Wyatt’s eyebrows rose slightly. So. Not a word from Veraine about Wyatt’s stealthy escape from the lab after yesterday’s sex with Ginger? Or maybe Veraine was just waiting for the right moment to broach the subject.
    Then again, Ginger had undoubtedly confirmed she was successful with the amazing congress of a cow…
    “Your production is right on schedule,” Wyatt acknowledged, ignoring the sudden twitching in his groin at the memory of yesterday’s sex. “Impressive.”
    “You can count on us, agent Wyatt. We’re nothing if not responsible.” Veraine gave Wyatt a small smile, then walked around his computer console to take the silent soldier’s arm. “Come. I need to walk this one back to the storage area. And there’s something I want to show you there.”
    “Fine. I need to do a body count anyway.”
    The two men led the soldier back along the familiar route to the factory floor, then around the corner to the massive storage area. Once the soldier was in place in the back row beside his fellow robots, Veraine motioned to Wyatt with a subtle finger.
    Wyatt followed Veraine deep into the dense rows of identical machines, all with their one-piece camouflage uniforms and their staring, lifeless black eyes. Veraine stopped next to one that looked exactly like all the others.
    “This is solder two-thousand-two,” he said quietly, indicating the number on the uniform patch that would ordinarily reflect a soldier’s name. Reaching up to insert a finger into the robot’s mechanical mouth, Veraine pulled down its jaw just far enough to allow him to extract a small felt pouch.
    Wyatt knew what he’d see even before Veraine opened the drawstring and tipped the contents into his palm.
    Diamonds. Five round, perfectly faceted, brilliant stones.
    Veraine hastily shoved them back into the pouch and re-inserted the felt sack into the soldier’s mouth. “Shall I show you numbers one, one-thousand-one, three-thousand-three and four-thousand-four?”
    Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. Damn straight. He was going to make Veraine show him each one.
    In the early hours of last night, Wyatt had had time to consider what this supposed secret information from Veraine might mean. There were three possibilities. Number one: Veraine was telling the truth and Carron was actually intending to smuggle diamonds inside the robot soldiers to ensure a comfortable retirement for himself. Number two: Veraine was setting up his boss to make it look like Carron was smuggling diamonds, undoubtedly to get the High Council to replace Carron with Veraine. After all, just yesterday Veraine had told Wyatt, I’m an ambitious man . Although, the only problem with this second scenario was how Titus Veraine could get his hands on stones this valuable. There was even a third possibility – that Veraine and Carron, working together, hoped Wyatt would go running back to Theus with this conspiracy tale, only to have it disproved when the machines arrived in Terra Acer, discrediting Wyatt in the Council’s eyes. So whether truth or lie, Wyatt was determined to make Veraine play this out.
    He nodded.
    Veraine glanced around, in an obvious move to make sure no one on the manufacturing floor was taking