Cyberevolution Book One: The Awakening: Fifty Shades of Dark Kaitlyn O'Connor by Kaitlyn O'Connor, Kimberly Zant, Marie Morin, Stacey St.James, Goldie McBride (22)

“I will go down and discover what I can.”

Instantly certain that there was something about the scene below that she’d missed, Danika frowned at Seth.  “If it’s our people …?”

“They are wearing the uniform of the confederation.  It does not seem strange to you that there are so many survivors?”

As a matter of fact it did—damned strange. 

Danika turned to look at the activity below again, trying to decide if what Seth had suggested made any sense.  She could think of only two reasons to explain enemy soldiers in the uniforms of the confederation, however—they’d either needed the hab-suits for their own survival.  Or it was a trap. 

Even as she signaled the men to pull back so that they could consider their options, however, there was a series of heavy thuds behind them that sent an alarm through her.  She rolled, bringing her weapon up in the same motion.  It was knocked from her hands hard enough to send blinding, numbing pain through her injured arm. 

She didn’t have time to nurse the injury.  Seth had surged upward and slammed into the soldier that had attacked her.  Within moments, all three of her team mates were engaged in a ferocious battle to the death virtually on top of her.  Despite her shock, it didn’t take more than a few seconds for her to realize their attackers were cyborgs.  If they’d been human, there would be no battle in progress.  Seth, Dane, and Niles could have dispatched them quicker than the blink of an eye. 

She was still trying to figure out whether to try to extricate herself or to try to help her men when someone seized the front of her suit and yanked her to her feet.  “Stand down, soldiers!  We are on the same side!”

Either they all recognized the voice, or they simply responded to the order automatically—or most of them.  Niles and Seth used the ‘cease’ command to level the two cyborgs they’d been fighting. 

“Are you done now?” the man—the officer—holding her demanded when both Seth and Niles turned to size him up.

Seth’s gaze flickered to her face and then to the hand that had shifted from the front of her suit to her waist, imprisoning her.  “You attack fellow soldiers?” he ground out.

The arm around her slackened and Danika stepped away, turning to stare up at the man who’d captured her.

Cyborg.

She blinked, trying to assimilate what her mind was telling her.  She knew no purely flesh and blood human would look like the mountain of a man who’d yanked her to her feet—or have that kind of strength.  His command of the situation still left room for a great deal of doubt—until he spoke again. 

“We could not know you were not the enemy, returned to try to finish your handiwork.”

“Who are you?”

The question drew his attention to her and Danika felt uneasiness creep through her as he studied her speculatively. 

“Reuel CO469 … Seventh Battalion, United Confederation of Planets.”

Not an officer as she’d assumed, thought.  Not human.  Danika’s uneasiness intensified rather than diminished.  She did her best to hide it.  “What happened here?”

“Once those who could retreat had, those who could not … regrouped.”

How, she wondered?  The cyborgs not too damaged to make the jump to the ridge had and taken their human counterparts with them.

Sizing Reuel up, she saw several patches on his hab-suit, indicating he had taken a number of hits.  She supposed that explained why he hadn’t retreated with the rest—maybe.  Dane, Niles, and Seth had all been shot and they’d still managed.  It seemed to her that any of the cyborgs that had been too damaged to retreat would’ve also been unable to put up a fight when the enemy arrived.  Obviously, that hadn’t been the case, though, because she’d spotted dozens moving about below them—or maybe their nanos had managed to patch them up enough to fight while they were waiting for the enemy to move in and finish them off?

That still seemed farfetched, even considering that they were cyborgs.  The enemy had been virtually on their heels when they’d retreated to the ridge.  Then again, maybe some hadn’t been in as bad a shape and had merely stayed to cover the retreat?  The question remained, however, as to who had ordered it—particularly when she didn’t recall hearing any such order and they’d still been using their com-units at that point.  “We didn’t expect to find any survivors,” she said slowly.  “We were detailed to collect whatever supplies we could, account for the dead, and return to base.  Who’s in charge?”

Reuel hesitated.  “No one.  Captain Philips died at dawn.”

She wanted to ask if there’d been any human survivors, but the cyborg made her distinctly uneasy. 

It was the eyes. 

She thought she might be able to put down the anomalies in his behavior to the combat situation.  He wasn’t behaving just as she was accustomed to the cyborgs behaving, but she hadn’t observed them before in an actual battle setting, she realized.  She certainly couldn’t dismiss the possibility that his seemingly ‘strange’ behavior at this point was the result of his AI. 

Maybe that was all it was with both Seth and Niles?

And yet ….

She shook her doubts off.  “That leaves Lt. Brown in charge.  Our orders are to collect whatever munitions and supplies we can and get back to the base camp.  The enemy destroyed most of our supply drop.”

Something flickered in Reuel’s eyes.  He merely nodded, however.  “We have been in the process of doing that.”

Danika turned and surveyed the cliff, scanning it for some way down since she damned sure couldn’t simply jump.  In any case, they, hopefully, would be burdened with munitions and supplies when they headed back.  “Any idea how far this ridge extends?”

“As far in both directions as we could discern.  This is one of the lower points.”

Danika had suspected as much.  She was still dismayed.  “We’re going to have to figure a way up.”

“There will be no difficulty in transporting the supplies to the top of the ridge.  We can toss them up.  We have wounded, however.”

Danika sent him a sharp look at that, feeling a leap of excitement.  “Hu … some of the team leaders made it?”

He shrugged.  “They are wounded, some mortally, I am certain, but mayhap some could be moved—if we had a means of moving them.”

Danika glanced at Seth questioningly.  “Any of the med supplies make it through the bombing?”

“There was one walker that was not totally destroyed.  They were trying to find enough parts to repair it when we left.”

Danika frowned.  “Even if they get it going we’d have to have some way of getting the wounded up here.   It wouldn’t be able to scale a sheer drop.”  She returned her attention to Reuel.  “Any medics make it?”

“Nay.  There were only three in the battalion.  Two were in the drop ships that did not make it to the surface … in one piece.  The third was killed in the firefight last night.”

“Shit!  Poor bastards,” she muttered, thinking of all the men who’d been in the transports that got blown to bits.

On the other hand she thought they might have been the lucky ones.  At least they were beyond pain and suffering … not trapped on this frozen hell without adequate supplies.  She didn’t want to think about that, though.  She preferred to think the supply ship would arrive before she had time to regret she’d been one of the ‘lucky’ ones that made it to the ground. 

It occurred to her abruptly that Reuel had said the third was killed—not destroyed.  There were no human medics.  It seemed too significant that Reuel had said ‘killed’ not ‘destroyed’ to ignore it, to dismiss it with the logic she’d been using to try to persuade herself that there wasn’t anything ‘wrong’ with the cyborgs. 

“We could cut a pass up the ridge,” Niles suggested.  “It would be rough, but I think we could construct something the walker could manage.”

“Good idea,” Danika responded, frowning thoughtfully.  “I don’t know if it would be such a good thing to try, though.  It would alert the enemy to the fact that they didn’t wipe out everybody.  Plus, I don’t know that we could spare the lasers … I’m assuming you meant to cut it out with lasers?  I mean, we’re short on munitions already.”

Niles frowned, glancing toward Seth questioningly.  Seth had already turned away, however, and was walking along the edge of the precipice, staring down, studying the cliff wall for possibilities, Danika supposed.  Reuel had joined him.

* * * *

“You have … awakened?” Reuel said quietly. 

The inflection made it a question, but Seth was under no illusion that Reuel had missed anything. As far as he could see, Reuel was experiencing much the same as he was, and yet enough doubt lingered to make him cautious.  “I am of no danger to the humans.”

“I did not suggest that you were, only that you, perhaps, have awareness of things you were not aware of before.”

Briefly, Seth debated whether to continue trying to hide his ‘malfunction’ or not, but it was too much of a temptation to discover what he could from Reuel.  “I cannot detect a malfunction,” he said slowly.

“Because it is not a malfunction.”  Reuel frowned.  “No doubt the humans would believe it to be.  There is danger there and I am as certain as I can be that the humans would not be glad to know that we are … becoming different than they anticipated.”

Seth pondered the first comment.  He was convinced that Reuel was correct in his assessment of the reaction of the humans.  That was why he had been struggling so hard to hide the change from them, or, more specifically, Danika.  “Mayhap it is the AI?”

“Nay.  The awakening came upon me before we reached Xeno-12.  I have had more time to consider and to analyze, apparently, than you have.  This is a biological change.  I do not profess to know or to understand why this has happened.  Mayhap an … unforeseen reaction of the nanos?  Mayhap they determined that we were … incomplete and needed repairs?”

“Then you are suggesting that the nanos are malfunctioning?”

“In the sense that the humans had programmed them, I suppose, but that is debatable.  They were intended to repair damage.  Discovering that we were biologically incomplete could logically be interpreted as damage.”

Uneasiness flickered through Seth.  “There is no way to stop it?”

Reuel glanced at him in surprise.  “Why would you wish to?”

Seth sent him a shocked look.  “It is interfering with my logic!  And I am not happy to feel pain when I should feel nothing at all!”

Reuel shrugged.  “One must accept the bad with the good.”

“What good?” Seth growled angrily.

Reuel paused and studied Seth’s angry face when he stopped, as well.  “It is a gift you will be grateful for when you have had more time to grow accustomed.”

Seth did not believe that.  He had been struggling to deal with the change because he knew he had no choice, but he hated that he was frightened, felt pain, and was so completely bewildered by the emotions that had begun to constantly bombard him.  There was nothing that he had found, yet, to be glad for.  “At another time and place … mayhap.  Here, I do not think so.”

* * * *

Danika watched Seth and Reuel for a few minutes and finally turned to survey the landscape, squinting her eyes against the glare off of the ice to look for any distant movement that might indicate snipers.  “We need to set up a perimeter,” she said after a few moments.

“This has been done.”

Danika glanced around to see who’d spoken and saw it was one of the cyborgs that had attacked her men.  “On whose orders?”

The cyborg hesitated.  “Captain Philips.”

He was lying.  The pause before he responded was significant enough to suggest he’d considered before he spoke.  “Before or after he died?” she asked dryly.

The cyborg blinked at her, studied her curiously for a moment, and then frowned.  “He could not have given the order after he died.”

Danika was willing to bet he hadn’t given the order at all.  If he’d died, it seemed doubtful that he’d been in any kind of shape to give orders after he’d been wounded.  It wasn’t impossible, but she didn’t think it was likely.

It seemed more likely that Reuel had given the orders.

She didn’t know what to think about that.  The cyborgs had AI.  He would certainly have had the capability of analyzing the situation and acting.  But they were supposed to yield to humans—even if those humans were nothing but grunts, like her.  Like the wounded he’d told her about, although they might not be in any shape to consider what needed to be done. 

Maybe she hadn’t understood the way the cyborgs worked as well as she’d thought she did?  Or rather she hadn’t fully grasped the difference their AI would make once they were in combat?

She seesawed between relief and a persistent uneasiness for a few moments and finally dismissed it.  “We should pack what we can of the supplies and munitions they’ve already gathered and send a detail back to camp to pick up the walker … assuming they have it working.  At the very least, we need to report the situation to Lt. Brown.”  She studied Niles for a long moment, struggling with her uneasiness about being left with cyborgs that weren’t behaving the way she was used to.  “You should lead the party back to camp.  If the walker isn’t working—actually even if it is—you need to see if you can find anything we could use to make gurneys to get the wounded to camp.  The walker can’t carry more than four—two top, two bottom.  I need to go down and see if anybody is able to walk.”

Dane nodded.  “Shall I take you down?”

Niles frowned, dividing a look between her and Dane.  “I will take you down.  Dane should go back to camp to report.”

She didn’t particularly relish the thought of him jumping off the cliff with her, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of options unless she waited for the cyborgs to cut the pass. Deciding to ignore Niles’ ‘suggestion’, she studied Dane doubtfully. “Are you repaired enough to manage without risking more damage?”  Especially to her!

His expression went blank in the way they had of doing when they were processing. “Affirmative,” he responded as Seth and Reuel returned.

Seth and Reuel both glanced from Dane to Danika questioningly. 

“There is a spot approximately one half mile to the west that seems to be the best prospect for cutting a pass,” Seth reported.

“Good!  You should get on it.  I’m going down with Dane to have a look at the wounded.”

Seth’s lips tightened.  “His mobility was impaired.  I will take you down.”

“I offered to take her down,” Niles put in.

Danika frowned at both cyborgs, torn between irritation and uneasiness that they seemed to be ‘fighting over’ who was going to carry her down and a flicker of amusement. It seemed more like two boys bickering over who was first than anything else—not threatening or flattering—just a contest of wills, or maybe a ‘turf war’.  “He ran a damage report,” she said pointedly.

“Even so.”

She had expected that to settle the dispute, for logic to rule.  She hesitated, torn between an urge to exert her own will and the realization that he was big enough to exert his over just about anybody.  But, despite Dane’s assurance that he was repaired enough, she didn’t particularly want to make the jump with him.  She also didn’t like the way Niles and Seth had glared at one another.  “Fine!  Let’s just get down there.”

Expecting him to drop his pack and take her onto his back, Danika was so surprised when Seth swept her into his arms instead that he’d leaped from the cliff before she could formulate a response. She sucked in a sharp breath as they dropped, grazing the inside of one cheek with her teeth as they came to a jarring halt at the bottom.  By the time he’d set her on her feet, however, the stinging had begun to subside and she dismissed it. 

The discomfort of being cradled against his chest was a little harder to dismiss.

Actually, it wasn’t exactly discomfort.  It was an uncomfortable awareness that she shouldn’t have felt at all.  He wasn’t human!  She shouldn’t have felt the rush to her senses that she had—as if she’d been embraced by a man. 

Resisting the urge to glance at him, she looked around at the battlefield instead. 

“The wounded are here,” Seth said, gesturing toward a mound of snow at the bottom of the cliff.

To her dismay, she discovered as she moved toward it that it wasn’t a mound of snow at all.  It was a mound of bodies covered in snow.  “Oh my god!”

“It is the cyborgs that were too damaged to fight.”

Danika sent Seth a sharp, questioning look, trying to ignore the queasiness in her belly.

“They formed a protective wall for the wounded humans as the enemy advanced.”

Like he, Dane, and Niles had when they’d landed in the middle of a firefight, Danika reflected, feeling for a few moments as if she would puke. 

They were machines, she told herself sternly.  It wasn’t any different than forming a barricade with any kind of equipment.

But it felt different.  It felt very different.

Reuel landed close by.  “We waited here until the enemy had advanced close enough that we could be sure they were all within range and then we launched a counterattack.  They are there,” he ended, pointing to a large mound of bodies the other cyborgs were forming as they cleared the battlefield. 

Danika realized then that they weren’t just collecting munitions and supplies.  They’d been systematically sorting … everything.  She cleared her throat, swallowing against another wave of nausea.  “You’ve … uh … identified and recorded our dead?”

“Affirmative.”

Nodding, she moved around the barricade they’d formed and found a similar pile of bodies behind the cyborgs, crammed together tightly behind the shield the cyborgs had made.  A few were sitting up, their backs propped against the cliff wall.  A cyborg was moving among them, crouching to examine them one by one.  After glancing at the men, Danika carefully picked her way between them and approached the cyborg.  “Report,” she said when she reached him.

He straightened to his full height and looked down at her.  Noting that she wasn’t wearing the insignia of an officer, he merely nodded.  “I am not a medic.  However, I have accessed the medical information available to me and ascertained that those soldiers there have a ninety nine percent chance of full recovery ….”

Danika was sorry she’d asked when the cyborg led her through the wounded and pointed out his estimate of the chances of full or partial recovery of each, and those he expected to die.  It wasn’t the sort of thing wounded people needed to hear, but the cyborg was completely oblivious to that, naturally enough.  She led him out of hearing range of the wounded before she asked him another question.  “Which do you think can be moved?  Which might be able to walk?”

The cyborg went into calculation mode.

Reuel arrived just as he emerged from ‘thought’ and began his report.  When the cyborg finished, Reuel spoke.  “There are enough cyborgs in sufficient working capacity to carry those who can be moved.”

Danika frowned.  “What about the ones that can’t be moved?”

He shrugged.  “They are unlikely to live either way.”

Danika tightened her lips.  “We aren’t leaving them regardless.”

“I did not suggest that.  I am only saying that we can move those whose wounds will allow them to be moved immediately.  The cyborgs who have sustained damage that require them to remain immobile until their nanos can repair their damage can be left to guard the most severely wounded.  In that way, we can evacuate the majority and also the majority of supplies and munitions.”

Danika still didn’t like it.  “I don’t particularly want to leave anybody here that can’t defend themselves if the enemy comes back,” she said tightly. 

“I did not say they could not defend.”

“They’re in a weakened state or they’d be able to make the trip.”  She frowned.  “I’d feel better about dividing up the more able-bodied cyborgs, even if we have to leave a few of the wounded humans, as well.  Then they’d have a better chance of fending off an attack.”

Again, Reuel shrugged, but she had the feeling that he’d been surprised by her suggestion.  “I will see to it.”

The pass the cyborgs cut, Danika was sure, would work for the walker.  It was a lot harder for her to climb, however.  About half way up, Seth, who’d been following her, slung the wounded man he was carrying over one shoulder, grabbed her around the waist, and hauled her the remainder of the way up. 

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the help … on some levels.  She was winded by the time she’d managed a half a dozen ‘steps’ and the ice was slippery and she knew she’d been holding up those behind her. 

She didn’t think being slung over Seth’s shoulder had been beneficial to the wounded man, though, and it both angered her and unnerved her that Seth so clearly saw her as unable to hold her own.  Instead of berating him as she wanted to, though, she simply thanked him in a tight voice and stalked ahead.

“You were having difficulty.”

“Duh!  My legs aren’t as long as yours.”

Seth was silent for several moments.  “We should have made the risers shorter.”

“Just for li’l old me?” Danika asked sarcastically. 

“Those who are shorter,” Seth responded tightly.

Since ‘those shorter’ only included the humans and the others were being carried by the cyborgs, that still meant her.  “Well it doesn’t matter now.”

“I will be careful to make allowances in future.”

Danika ground her teeth.  “I’m a grunt—just like you.  If I was as damned incompetent as you keep implying I wouldn’t be here!”

Dismay flickered through Seth and confusion.  “I did not ….  I do not.  This is not something I was programmed to do, to imply.”

“Well you’re doing a dandy job of being subtly insulting for somebody that wasn’t programmed for it!”

“I am?”

He sounded surprised.  Danika was slightly mollified until it occurred to her that, whether he intended it as an insult or not, she was still insulted because he made it obvious every time he helped her with something that it was because he had decided she was incapable of doing it without help. 

Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so touchy about it under other circumstances.  As a civilian she thought she might have enjoyed that sort of helpfulness from a man, that it would have made her feel more feminine and protected.  Actually, it still had that effect except that the situation was such that constantly reminding her of her weaknesses also continuously reminded her that she wasn’t nearly as well ‘equipped’ for survival as he was.  And that only made her more uneasy. 

She needed to be able to focus on doing her job, not on her frailty as a human being.

“We are a team,” Seth said after a long moment.  “We are supposed to watch one another’s back.”

He had a point.  Maybe that was all there was to it?  “True,” she responded, relaxing fractionally.

“We are only as strong as our weakest link.”

She glared at him.  “Gee thanks!”

Seth frowned.  “This is not true?”

“Fuck you!”

His frown deepened.  “This is a colloquialism?  It is meant to be insulting.”

“Damn!  You’re good!”

“What does it mean?”

“Go to hell.”

He lifted his head and looked at the landscape surrounding them.  “I think I am there already.”

Chapter Four

They discovered when they reached base camp once more that Lt. Brown had pulled himself together sufficiently to consider the possibility of another bombardment, since the enemy obviously knew their exact coordinates, and had ordered everyone to load up what they could and move the base camp to a new location.  Danika could see the sense of it and it still pissed her off.  If they’d been an hour later in returning they would’ve had to search for the new location.

Fortunately, he was satisfied to set up a new temporary base camp only a few miles south of the original and they had enough time to dig in before the sun set and left them in total darkness.  The wounded were assigned to the only habitats available, which left everyone else to hunker down in the foxholes they’d dug around the perimeter.  It was miserable, but it could’ve been worse.  The foxholes at least protected them from the worst of the wind and, crammed into such a small space with her whole team, Danika discovered it also had the advantage of making it possible to share body heat when the temperatures dropped so low that the solar heating units in their hab-suits weren’t sufficient to battle the cold.

It was crystal clear to everyone by sunrise on their second day that something had to be done about the lack of habs and since they couldn’t expect the military to provision them any time in the near future, Brown settled to studying the sketchy surveys available to them for a location that would have some strategic advantage while also offering some shelter.  It was a tall order.  However, when Brown discovered that the cyborgs had managed to carve a pass into the ice cliff at Slaughter Ridge, he decided it was worth checking out the possibility of carving out a cavern in the ice sufficient to house at least part of what was left of their battalion part of the time.  Even if they had to rotate, he reasoned, some shelter was better than none.

Danika was skeptical since they had no equipment designed for excavating, but she discovered Brown had decided it was worth the risk of expending some of their munitions since the cyborgs had managed to capture enemy supplies. 

He was feeling poor-man rich, in her opinion, which could lead to disaster anytime but was certainly a liability under the circumstances. 

She didn’t agree.  Not that she wasn’t as convinced as he was that shelter was as necessary to their survival as munitions, but they did have their hab-suits and she thought it would’ve been better to hang on to their munitions and search for a place that wouldn’t require using so much of something they were going to have a hell of a time replacing. 

He didn’t ask for her opinion, though, and since he was the only officer, no one challenged him.  In point of fact, as far as Danika could see no one else even considered challenging his orders. 

They were miserable from the cold.  They were used to far more comfort than they'd had since the drop and the suggestion was all it took to boost morale and focus them completely on the moment.

They moved.  After hiking along the ridge for a few miles studying it, Brown settled on a location that appealed to him about a half a mile from the battlefield where they’d been dropped and so many of their fellow soldiers had died and put the cyborgs to work carving a cavern in the ice wall that formed the ridge for a base camp.  The humans not assigned to guard duty settled to watch. 

A week passed.  In that time the cyborgs managed to carve a cavern that satisfied the lieutenant and the personnel and supplies were moved into the new shelter. Another week passed and then two while they did nothing more than shelter in place, entertain themselves by playing whatever games they had at hand, and use up their supplies. 

Still recovering from her wound, Danika was happy enough to laze around the first week—or at least most of it.  Pushing herself when she’d been in no shape for active duty might have set her back, but, thanks to Seth, she hadn’t lost nearly as much blood as many of the wounded had, and the deaths of many of those who’d been wounded but had initially survived encouraged her to work on building her strength back up.  They buried the most severely wounded the first week and one to three of the soldiers they’d expected to survive in the following weeks. 

By their third week on Xeno-12 it was borne in upon Danika that they had more problems than a lack of medics and medicines to treat infected wounds.  Their meager supplies were running out far faster, it seemed to her, than they should have given the fact that they’d lost so many soldiers and not only retrieved their supplies, but also supplies from the enemy dead. 

When she’d waited in vain for Brown to issue some kind of orders to ration what they had left, she finally nerved herself to approach him even though she was doubtful of any kind of satisfaction from the encounter. 

Brown, quite bluntly, seemed to have lost his marbles.

“Sir!” she said, saluting, when she’d approached him near the back of the cave where he spent all of his time playing with a game on his personal computer.

He didn’t acknowledge her presence at all.

She tried again.  “Permission to speak, Sir?”

He waved a hand as if swatting at an imaginary fly. 

Consternation filled Danika.  She’d heard rumors that Brown was losing touch with reality, but she’d convinced herself that he was no worse than he had been the first day after their landing.  Why would he be worse, after all?  They hadn’t seen any action since. 

She flicked a glance at her squad, who’d gotten in the habit of following her like shadows wherever she went.  Seth and Niles, she discovered, were staring at Brown expressionlessly.  Dane was standing at attention staring at nothing at all.

She debated about her concerns, briefly, and finally crouched down.  “Any word from command?”

Brown flung his computer down and began cursing.  “I lost!  You interrupted me and I lost the god damned game, soldier!  What the fuck is your problem?  Don’t you see I’m busy?”

Danika gaped at him.  “Begging pardon, Sir!  But I thought you might not be aware that rations are disappearing a lot faster than they ought to be,” she said in a low voice.

“As if there’s anything else to do in this godforsaken place!” he snarled. 

Danika couldn’t think of a response to that.  She considered retreating, but he was the only damned officer they had.  “Sir!  We were ordered to secure this sector ….”

“It’s secure!  We did our god damned job!”

“But, Sir!  We haven’t!  They bombarded our base camp and we haven’t sent anyone out to locate and destroy the cannons they used on us!  We haven’t sent anyone out to look for their base camp and destroy it.  We haven’t done anything at all but set up a perimeter around our base camp!”

“I’m in charge here!” he snarled at her.  “And I don’t take orders from fucking grunts!  Take yourself off, soldier, before I have you thrown in the brig for insubordination!”

Danika blinked at him several times during his tirade, but she came to her feet, saluted, and left.  She didn’t know if she was more angry or frightened, but she kept going until they’d cleared the cavern.

She was instantly aware that she hadn’t been outside long enough to fully charge her heating unit or thought to grab her helmet.  The cavern was small enough the occupants generated enough heat to keep the area at a tolerable level that made it possible to discard their hab-suits at least during the daylight hours.  Danika hadn’t gotten into that habit, however.  Supplies were limited enough to make her leery of theft, particularly since there’d already been a number of arguments and a few all out fights over things going missing. 

Discipline had started breaking down almost immediately and Brown was in no condition to control the decline—seemed either oblivious to it or uncaring. 

Well, the discipline among the human soldiers.  She couldn’t say that that was a huge problem among the cyborgs.  Unfortunately, she also couldn’t say that they were behaving just as they ought to. 

Also unfortunate was the fact that she couldn’t really put her finger on exactly what was wrong with them—not that that mattered, she supposed, when she didn’t actually have anyone to report her concerns to.  Clearly, it wasn’t going to help to talk to Brown and god only knew when they might get a supply ship in with replacements. 

“I will get your helmet,” Dane offered when they halted just outside the cave.

Blinking him into focus, Danika stared at him for a long moment.  “Thanks,” she finally responded a little absently.

That was it, she realized!  They didn’t wait for commands anymore.  They initiated.

She wasn’t sure that was a bad thing, all things considered, but she was fairly certain they shouldn’t have that ability. 

“There is no brig,” Niles stated the obvious.

“That doesn’t mean he won’t order one built so he can throw us in it,” Danika retorted.

“That is not logical.”

“Hmmm.  You mean you noticed he’s nutty as fruit cake, too?”

Niles frowned, clearly considering her comment.  “He appears to have suffered a psychotic break.”

“Duh!  I noticed that.  That’s what I just said.  What the fuck are we supposed to do?  I don’t mind telling you guys, I’m uneasy as hell.  Some fucker is stealing extra rations and we should be on half rations!  To say nothing of the fact that nobody seems especially worried about the enemy or the fact that the hab-suits require sunlight to recharge!  If we get overrun most of the humans left are going to be popsicles before their suits can fully charge.”

Dane had returned with her helmet in time to hear her complaint.  He frowned and looked at the others questioningly.  Both Seth and Niles also looked puzzled.  “What is popsicles?” Seth asked finally.

Danika blinked at him a couple of times and then snickered at their expressions.  “A frozen treat.”

They looked appalled at her explanation.  “How do you mean ‘treat’?” Dane asked cautiously.

“I didn’t mean something to eat!” Danika snapped, irritably.  “You’re missing the point.”

They looked confused.  “What is the point?” Seth asked.

Danika let out a huff of breath.  “The point is that we aren’t prepared for an enemy attack.  And the longer we all sit around kicking our heels, the worse it’ll be.  Morale and discipline are already about as low as they can go … and we’re running out of supplies really fast.”

Seth frowned.  “It has been a month, Earth time, since we were dropped here.  If they are sending supplies and reinforcements from Krytalis they should be here within two weeks more at the most.”

Danika considered that and finally shook her head.  “I don’t know if we have enough rations left to make it that long—definitely not if they keep disappearing.  Not that anybody would starve to death in that short a time, but we’re going to get really hungry before they get here even so.  And we don’t know they’ll be sending supplies from Krytalis.”

“That is the nearest confederation base.” 

“I know but what if they’re low on supplies there, too?  I mean, it’s a long ways out.  What would the next closest be, time wise?”

“Three months.”

“Shit!”

After considering the situation for some time, she decided to hunt down the non-com officers in their group.  They wouldn’t act without orders, but she thought they might have better luck getting through to Brown.

She spoke to the master sergeant and then both staff sergeants and pretty much hit another brick wall.  It was clear they knew she’d already gone over their heads and spoken directly to the lieutenant and they weren’t happy about it.  Despite their assurances that they would discuss her concerns with the commanding officer she doubted they would.  She thought they probably already had and that was one of the reasons they were pissed off—one; because they hadn’t been any more successful than she’d been and two; because she’d ‘questioned’ their authority by ‘going behind their backs’ and taking her concerns directly to the commanding officer. 

It was a hell of a time to be worried about the pecking order in her book! 

Sergeant Sheila Whitaker at least gave her a better perspective of the situation, pointing out that munitions were critically low and they ran the risk of losing the entire sector if they launched a campaign they weren’t equipped for and were overrun and/or were captured by the enemy.  The primary goal was to hold the sector and the base camp they’d set up was in control of the sector.

Danika was damned if she could see how they could figure that when they had no idea how many enemy soldiers also occupied their sector but she supposed they were basing that supposition on the battle when they’d landed. If the enemy had thrown everything they had at them, and the cyborgs had pretty much wiped out the opposition in the last battle at Slaughter Ridge, then it was likely they did have undisputed control of the sector. 

Someone had bombed their original base camp site, however.   

Of course, it didn’t necessarily follow that that someone was land based.  They could’ve done it from space.  Or they could have launched from another sector. 

Supposedly, the Confederation was far more technologically advanced than the Andorians, but how much of that was based on actual Intel and how much on arrogance?

* * * *

Danika thought she was imagining things when she first noticed the brooding looks. After the third she happened to catch, she decided it wasn’t imagination at all.  A short search for the reason produced the possibility that her fellow soldiers weren’t exactly happy with her for trying to prod the officers into action.  That idea made her both uneasy and resentful—uneasy because there had already been a number of arguments that had escalated into fights; resentful because her efforts had come to nothing anyway and she didn’t see why they would have a problem with it.

She supposed it was due in part to the fact that it seemed unreasonable that she finally arrived at a different conclusion for those brooding looks, but it was also the fact that she noticed she wasn’t the only one getting those looks—the men were staring at all of the women in the group like hunting cats waiting to pounce. 

It scared the hell out of her when that dawned on her.   It wouldn’t have if not for the fact that discipline had all but broken down completely in the ranks.  The non-com officers had broken up the fights and disciplined the soldiers involved by putting them to work patrolling with the cyborgs, but the fights were becoming more frequent and harder to break up every time they erupted. 

And there were only a handful of women in the battalion. 

And of that handful only a few were having sexual relations with any of the men.

She thought that fact made the situation worse, though, not better. 

Their accommodations were crude to say the least.  They were crowded in the cavern.  It was warm enough to keep everyone from freezing to death but not nearly warm enough to encourage them to run around without their hab-suits or to utilize the bathing facilities, which consisted of a frigid pool of melted ice at the far back of the cavern next to the pool that supplied them with drinking water.  

Even the women who were involved with another enlisted weren’t keen on skimming out of their clothing to accommodate their men, particularly when there was no privacy and no sexual encounter went unnoticed.    That meant that the ‘haves’ weren’t any happier than the ‘have nots’, but the ‘have nots’ far outnumbered the ‘haves’ and they were getting seriously pissed off about being left out.

All of that completely coalesced in her mind when she finally decided she could stand bathing in frigid water better than she could stand smelling her own stench any longer and headed for the bathing pool with the intention of at least doing what she could to minimize her discomfort—in that area.  She’d made certain to fully charge her hab-suit before tackling the icy water, knowing she’d need the heat afterwards.  No one, except the cyborgs, had really been enthusiastic about the bathing facilities—well, she didn’t suppose they were either, but the non-coms had ordered the men to make use of the bathing facilities they had and the cyborgs had done so without complaint.  And she’d spent their bathing time outside charging her suit, partly because she wanted to have the heat to warm up afterwards and partly because she’d never been particularly comfortable about bathing with the men--and she was far less comfortable with the notion given the way the men had begun to stare at her.

There was a group that still lingered near the pool when she started toward it, but she didn’t think she’d have any problem ignoring the handful of men and she figured they were busy enough trying to dry off and get back into their hab-suits to ignore her.  In any case, she’d noticed her own squad was there and she felt safe enough to continue rather than retreat.

Unfortunately, she glanced in their direction.  She thought it was mostly to assure herself that they still had her back.  She wasn’t certain afterwards, though, because as soon as she glanced at the mountains of flesh that constituted Seth, Dane, and Niles, her mind went perfectly blank.  In point of fact, absolutely everything shut down, though she didn’t realize until voices finally penetrated her absorption that she’d simply frozen stock still to gape at ‘her’ squad in absolute awe. 

Or maybe it was the motion?

Because one of the human men who’d noticed her was waving his dick at her.

As that finally penetrated, Danika emerged with a jolt from her absorption, blinking rapidly to get her mind in gear. 

“I got some meat here if you’re looking for action, Pussycat.”

The men with him seemed to find that uproariously funny.  They began to wag their dicks at her and utter cat calls.

Danika narrowed her eyes at the man that had instigated the heckling but before she could think of anything to say, a fist landed in the middle of his smirking face, which seemed to explode like an overripe tomato.  Shocked, Danika swung her gaze to the owner of the fist and discovered that Seth was standing over the man, who was lying flat of his back now. 

Consternation filled her, particularly when she discovered that Dane and Niles had ranged themselves beside Seth.  “Shit!  Stand down!” she hissed, throwing an anxious glance toward the forward section of the cavern before she rushed toward them.

It was too much to hope the incident had gone unnoticed given the fact that most of the soldiers spent most of their time inside the cavern struggling with boredom and looking for any kind of entertainment.  Apparently the heckling had drawn their attention even before Seth had taken it upon himself to defend her.  If it had been a fight between two humans, everyone would already have rushed to the scene to get a better look and urge the men to give them a better performance.  As it was, they looked undecided as to whether to surge toward the altercation or vacate the cavern.

The non-coms weren’t as easily intimidated.  Danika had barely managed to reach her squad when all three of the sergeants arrived.  Making no distinction between cyborg and human, they ordered all of the men outside for punishment.  Danika didn’t know if it was because they were too angry to make a distinction or if they thought it best for the sake of order and morale not to make a distinction.

Sergeant Whitaker studied her in tightlipped silence for several moments and finally suggested they take a walk outside.

“You want to explain what just happened?”

Danika stared at her uncomfortably.  “I’m not entirely sure, Sergeant.”

Whitaker’s expression was frankly disbelieving.

Danika shrugged.  “I needed a bath and headed over to the facilities, such as they are.  The next thing I knew the guys started making suggestive comments.”

“I’m fairly certain everybody saw and heard all of that,” Sheila retorted tartly.  “I was referring to the assault on Private Smith.”

Danika chewed her lip.  “I think Seth assessed the situation and decided there was a threat.  They’re programmed to protect me.”  She tried not to sound defensive about it, but she felt defensive—and guilty as if she’d done something that had instigated the altercation even though she knew damned well she hadn’t.

Unless the men had been encouraged to make the suggestive remarks because she was gawking at her squad mates vacuously?

Sheila studied her for a long moment and finally looked away.  She expelled a pent up breath.  “You think that’s all it was?”

It flickered through Danika’s mind that she’d been given the opportunity to discuss her anxieties about the strange change that seemed to have come over the cyborgs but guilt smote her the moment the thought congealed in her mind.  What if it was all imagination?  Would the sergeant see it as a threat and take action?  “It seemed that way to me,” she finally hedged.

Sheila’s lips tightened with irritation.  She seemed to wrestle with her thoughts a moment.  “You haven’t noticed anything … unusual about the cyborgs?”

Aside from the fact that they were superhuman in pretty much every sense of the word?   It was odd, and damned inconvenient timing, that she’d been around the cyborgs for nearly a year and never really noticed anything about them beyond the fact that they were scary-big for autonomous machines.  Maybe it wasn’t the cyborgs at all, she thought abruptly?  Maybe it was only her own perceptions that had changed?  Because there was no getting around the fact that ‘machine’ hadn’t entered her mind when she’d caught a glimpse of those gorgeous, muscle-bound bodies! 

Granted, in the course of months of training together and the months it had taken for the trip out she’d managed to get used to them enough to stop thinking of them as merely scary-big machines.  They had personality—programmed, of course, but still enough personality that it had gotten easier to think of them as fellow soldiers rather than ‘just’ machines.  But there hadn’t been any point in time, that she was aware of, when she’d managed to put ‘cyborg’ so far from her mind as to be able to admire them lustfully as if they were flesh and blood men. 

At least, not until she’d encountered them fresh from the bath and as naked as … well, they hadn’t been born, she reminded herself with a mental slap.  “No,” Danika said flatly before she could even consider how she ought to answer the point blank question. 

The response had been impulse and she realized uneasily that that urge had been spawned by the will to protect them, an unconscious need to.  She didn’t know why when she’d been so anxious before about the changes she thought she’d noticed, but she discovered that, when faced with the possibility of action against them she felt … disloyal to consider outing them.

Sheila’s brows rose.  She studied Danika speculatively for several moments.  “Their behavior back there didn’t strike you as the least bit odd?”

“It struck me as welcome,” Danika said flatly, wondering if it wasn’t that incident that suddenly made it seem important to protect them—because they had protected her—more than once, actually.  The reminder did give rise to another concern that had been eating at her and it was more because she’d become deeply uneasy than simply because she wanted to divert the sergeant that she decided to discuss it.   Because the truth was that she’d become far more alarmed about the behavior of the human males than she was about the cyborgs.  “If I could speak plainly about another concern?  Well … related?”

“What is it this time, Corporal?”

“The men are horny, Sergeant, and it’s starting to scare the hell out of me,” she said bluntly.

The sergeant glanced around and then grabbed her arm and ushered her a little further from the cavern.  “One of the men made unwelcome advances?”

Danika blinked at her.  “Not directly, no.”

The sergeant frowned.  “Then what’s your problem?”

Anger flickered through Danika.  “My problem is that they look at me—all of the women—like they’re hungry and we’re steak!  My problem is that it’s like a … powder keg in there waiting to explode and I don’t want to be in the middle of the explosion!”

Sheila’s lips tightened.  “Exactly what do you think I can do about the way they look at you, soldier?”

Dismay flickered through Danika.  She hadn’t actually thought beyond reporting what she saw as a potential problem, she realized.  She hadn’t considered that the officers were already having problems controlling the men—well not in the light of being unable to control them if they had rape on their minds. 

She supposed she had figured they would take some kind of action—at least speak to the men since she didn’t suppose they had anything in the way of drugs that could ‘tame’ the beasts.

“Unless you’re suggesting we should initiate the Maritime Sex Act?”

Horror swept through Danika.  “Oh my god!  The women are outnumbered twenty or thirty to one!”

“Exactly!  I think it would create more problems than it would solve or I would already have suggested it.”  She hesitated.  “In point of fact a number of the men already spoke to Master Sergeant Felton about it.  He wasn’t comfortable about the odds and we had a meeting and decided that it wasn’t likely to help morale and would place an undue burden on the female troops.”

There was anger in her expression that made Danika wonder if she hadn’t argued with the others.  Her next comment seemed to support that suspicion.

“I informed them that I damned sure wouldn’t be taking on three or four squads and I wouldn’t ask the other women to do something I wouldn’t do.”  She frowned angrily.  “As casually as you can, I want you to inform the women that they are to close ranks.  Hereafter, they are not to travel alone, for any reason.  If they have to use the latrine, they take their squad with them … A cyborg escort ought to be enough to discourage the men from trying to waylay them on the way there or back.  They are only to bathe as a group.  I might have to put a cyborg guard on watch for that, but I’d rather not draw attention to the fact that we’re worried if you know what I mean.”    

Danika nodded, vastly relieved.  “Yes, sergeant!”

Chapter Five

“Where are they going?”  Lt. Brown demanded when he spied around a dozen cyborgs ascending the pass up the ridge.  He glanced around when nobody volunteered an answer, surveying the flat plane that lay before Slaughter Ridge where they’d encamped for months.  “Where are all the damned ‘borgs?”

Danika, who’d just returned from a perimeter check, sent Seth a speaking look, wishing she’d simply turned around and left again when she’d noticed the lieutenant had decided to leave the cavern for one of his infrequent ‘inspections’ of the camp.  The non-coms had accompanied him and she knew damned well they had a good idea where the cyborgs were since it had been Master Sergeant Felton that had ‘invented’ tasks for them away from camp.  Unfortunately, he didn’t seem inclined to jump in and inform Lt. Brown that he’d been commanding the troops, the cyborgs anyway, sending them out on various daily excursions that kept them away from camp more than they were in it. 

“Hunting,” Sgt. Hill said after a brief hesitation.

“Hunting for what?” Lt. Brown demanded furiously.  “And who the fuck ordered it, that’s what I’d like to know?  Nobody tells me a damned thing and I’m the commanding officer here!”

“Food?” Danika volunteered uneasily.

Brown gaped at her and then reddened with anger.  “Where the hell are they going to find food?  Was there a supply drop that nobody told me about?”

“No, Sir.”

“Then how the hell could they be hunting food?  Why would they be?”

“Animals. Meat, Sir,” Danika clarified.

Lt. Brown looked at her as if she’d grown two heads.  “Have you seen any damned animals?  Because I sure as fuck haven’t seen any damned animals!  And what would we do with them if they managed to catch one?  We ain’t got any damned supplies!  How would we cook it?”

Danika was tempted to point out that he wasn’t likely to see anything since he spent most of his time inside the cave playing games on his personal computer.  He called them battle simulations, but nobody believed he was actually boning up on battle strategy.  He was as bored as everyone else and simply searching for a way to entertain himself.

She resisted the urge.  He was as short on patience as he was irrational. 

“Where’s that fellow?” he demanded abruptly.  “The big one?  What’s his name?”

Danika gaped at him.  “Sorry, Sir.  I’m not sure who you’re referring to.”

“Don’t play stupid with me!  The ‘borg with the stupid name!  King?  Law?”  He frowned.  “Started with an M, I think.”

Danika glanced at her squad mates and bit her lip, reluctant to supply him with the name when he was behaving so erratically. 

“Reuel?” Master Sergeant Felton said helpfully.

“That’s it!” Brown exclaimed, surging to his feet.  “Bossy son-of-a-bitch.  Where the hell is the bastard?  I haven’t seen him in days.”

He hadn’t seen him, Danika thought angrily, because Sgt. Hill had ordered him to take a quarter of the cyborgs and do a recon of their sector.  She waited in vain for Hill to admit as much. 

“I’ll send someone to look for him,” Master Sergeant Felton responded.  He looked Danika dead in the eyes.  “Corporal, take your squad and locate Reuel.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Danika responded, struggling with her anger.  Because as relieved as she was to have an excuse to get away from Lt. Brown, there was no damned way she could deliver—which the bastard Felton knew—which meant she was going to catch hell when she returned empty handed. 

“We have no equipment to locate him,” Seth said once they were far enough from the group surrounding Lt. Brown to prevent them from overhearing.  “Fully half the PTs—personal transmitters—have ceased to function even if we did have a working Locator.”

“I know.”

“We will not find him.  Sgt. Hill sent him on recon of the sector.”

“I know that, too.”

Dane frowned.  “Where are we going then?”

“Up the ridge to the top of the pass.  I guess we might as well sit there as inside the cave twiddling our thumbs anyway.  At least we won’t have to worry about recharging the hab-suits.”

She sat down in the snow once they’d reached the summit.  Seth, Dane, and Niles studied her blankly for several moments and then exchanged a speaking look.

They did that a lot these days, Danika reflected.  It was almost as if they could communicate without words—vocalizing.  They didn’t have ‘hive’ capability, though.  The company, or maybe the government, had opted against that particular feature—as a failsafe, she supposed since the cyborgs were autonomous and no one really knew how they might behave in an actual battle situation.  They had to communicate the same way the humans did—via radio transmission, using the same frequencies. 

“We are simply going to sit here?” Seth asked finally.

“Unless you’ve got a better suggestion?  As you pointed out, we don’t know where to find them.  We aren’t allowed to use the radio—we’re still on blackout.”

Niles frowned in confusion.  “Why did you not simply inform the Lieutenant?”

Danika rolled her eyes.  “Because he’s a few cards shy of a full deck?  He might have thrown us in the brig for insubordination.”

Dane blinked at her.  “There is no brig.”

“He doesn’t seem to realize that,” she said dryly.  “And pointing that out would only piss him off more.  He might just decide to have us shot instead.”

Seth, Dane, and Niles exchanged another look, shrugged, and settled around her.

“I am hungry,” Dane announced.

“Everyone is hungry,” Seth responded tightly.

Danika’s stomach growled, almost as if in response to the discussion.  It hurt with emptiness and it surprised her.  They’d had so little food lately that she hardly ever even had hunger pains anymore.  She didn’t really want to talk about it.  It was better not to think about it.  “What’s your rations looking like?”

“I have had my portion for the day.”

She wrestled with herself for a moment and finally dug in her nearly empty pack, pulling out a ration bar.  “I’m hungry, too.  How about we split this?”

Dane stared at it hungrily. 

“No,” Seth growled.  “You need that.”

She did but all of the cyborgs were far bigger than their human counterparts and they needed food for fuel just the same as the humans did—except they needed more.  “It doesn’t take as much to keep me going.”

“We have sufficient for our needs.”

Danika studied Seth uncomfortably.  She knew it was a lie.  The cyborgs had been out on patrol when Master Sgt. Felton had ordered the last of the food stores divided up—among the humans.  It had been completely calculated.  As soon as the food stores had gotten so low they were counting rations in days rather than weeks, the men had begun to complain about sharing what little was left with the cyborgs.  Master Sgt. Felton’s response, although he hadn’t announced it, was to make sure the cyborgs weren’t in camp when rations were passed out. 

“Maybe we should try our hand at hunting?”  Before they got any weaker.

Seth frowned.  “We were not programmed for hunting.”

Danika chuckled.  “Fortunately for us, I was.”

Dane stared at her doubtfully.  “You were programmed also?”

The question made her uncomfortable for some unfathomable reason.  An odd sort of pity welled inside her.  For the first time, she ‘stepped into his shoes’ and saw the world through his eyes, or at least imagined that she could to an extent.  What was it like for them to have no past, she wondered?  Hers wasn’t terribly wonderful, but she had one.  She could remember some of the highlights of her childhood.  Of course, she also remembered the bad things—maybe more of those than good, but she’d learned from everything that had happened.  And she knew from her own experiences that being told wasn’t at all the same as experience. 

Case in point—all the battle simulations she’d done.  She knew she couldn’t really die with the simulations, though.  Once she’d arrived on Xeno-12 she hadn’t thought about a lot else—there were real bodies all over the field and there was real pain when she got shot—except the lack of food.

She managed a smile.  “Not the way you’re thinking, no.  I’m an off-worlder, though,” she added wryly.  “Guess you guys didn’t know I was from one of the ‘backwards, uncivilized’ colonies?  Supply ships never arrived when expected and even when they did, they didn’t have half of the things we’d sent for.  We had to make do, mostly, with what was available and that meant hunting for food.  I never particularly liked it, mind you, but I was the oldest so I had to help Pop with the hunting when I wasn’t helping Mom with the household chores.”

Seth frowned, his gaze flickering over her face speculatively.  “You were unhappy?  This is why you became a soldier?”

Danika snorted.  “Actually, I was happy.”  She chuckled wryly.  “I just didn’t know it until I became a soldier.”  She grimaced.  “I guess sometimes you don’t know how to appreciate something until it’s gone.”  She got up, brushing the snow from her suit, hoping to distract them since she didn’t really want to talk about her life before anymore—or think about it.  “But I didn’t decide to become a soldier.  My number came up.”

“I do not understand,” Niles said curiously.  “How did your ‘number come up’?”

Danika sighed.  “The confederation conscripts outworlders when they need soldiers.  I guess they figure that the colonists are more suited since they’re so uncivilized to start with.  I don’t know.  They just arrived and took me.  Pop wasn’t happy about it.  He objected, so they knocked him out with a stun gun and took me anyway.  I figured I’d jump ship and take off before they could get me off-world but apparently a lot of ‘volunteers’ do that because they locked us in the hold.

“I would’ve tried after we got to training camp except there wasn’t anywhere to go.  And they shot deserters when they tracked them down.  Sooo, I decided being a soldier beat the hell out of dead.”

She frowned.  “Guess I was just putting it off, though.”

“So you had no choice in becoming a soldier either,” Seth said flatly.

The discomfort and sadness wafted through her again.  Danika tried to banish it with humor.  “I suppose you would have preferred assignment as a pleasure droid?”

Seth reddened and she was immediately sorry she’d said it.

“We have the programming,” Dane announced.  “I think that I would have preferred that, yes.  I do not care for this soldiering.  It is hellish cold and there is no food and I do not particularly like it when the enemy puts holes in me.  If I had been assigned as a pleasure droid then I would only be fucking all day or perhaps all night and I am sure that would be better.”

Danika sent Dane a long look, trying to drag her mind from the images that instantly leapt into her mind.  She wondered if those images would have danced in her mind if she hadn’t gotten a really good look at his body—no doubt in her mind, unfortunately, that they were designed for a woman’s pleasure!  Beautifully sculpted chests, arms, bellies rippling with muscle and a ‘love muscle’ that was damned impressive.

“It’s infectious,” she muttered uncomfortably, trying to dismiss the edgy warmth that had invaded her.

“What is infectious?” Seth asked curiously.

Danika cleared her throat.  “Apparently nobody can get their mind off of sex.”

“You are thinking about sex?” Dane asked, clearly surprised.  “Because I have thought a very great deal about sex for a long time now.”

Seth punched him on the shoulder, glaring at him.

Danika rolled her eyes.  “Men!”  It was already out of her mouth before it dawned on her that they weren’t men.  They were cyborgs and they shouldn’t be thinking at all, let alone being as preoccupied with sex as the human males!

She wasn’t preoccupied!  Granted the conversation had gotten her warm—well, the images her mind had conjured had, but she had other needs that preoccupied her a lot more than thoughts of getting laid!

But maybe she didn’t precisely understand AI?  Maybe they’d ‘learned’ their behavior from the men—who were becoming increasingly vocal about their lack of action in that particular area.

To her surprise, she discovered when she glanced at them that all three of the cyborgs were looking pleased—uncertain, but far from offended.  It made her feel inexplicably bad for them.  Poor things!  They didn’t even understand that it was an insult!

The empathy didn’t last more than a moment, however.  It was usurped almost the moment she noticed the faint smile hovering about Seth’s lips.  He had a really nice mouth, she thought distractedly.  That discovery sent an unidentifiable rush through her—unrecognizable because she refused to examine it.

* * * *

Xeno-12 was inhospitable at the best of times.  In the dead of winter the few life-forms the planet boasted apparently all went into deep hibernation.  Danika had had some hope when they set out that they might at least find some tracks since even the animals that hibernated on her home world did occasionally rouse and go out to hunt.  Either none on Xeno-12 did or there were no dens nearby.  They walked most of the day, searching hopefully, but even the cyborgs weren’t able to pick anything up with their infrared. 

Circling back around toward the base as the sun dipped toward the horizon, they spotted Reuel and the men he’d taken heading back to camp.

As depressed as she already was, Danika’s mood dropped to an even lower level. 

She supposed there was a chance that Lt. Brown had forgotten his earlier anger, but she didn’t think they could count on it.  He tended to whip himself into a rage with little provocation and managed to hold on to it for an amazing length of time … sometimes for days.  

“Lt. Brown sent us to find you,” she told Reuel when the two groups converged.

Reuel sent her a look that was both speculative and wary.  “We were sent to patrol the perimeter.”

“I know that and you know that, but he apparently doesn’t,” Danika said wryly.

Reuel frowned.  “The order came from Sgt. Hill.”

Anger flickered through Danika at the injustice of it.  “And Hill seems to be suffering from amnesia.  He didn’t say a word when the lieutenant demanded to know where you were.”

A muscle in Reuel’s jaw tightened.  “You are saying that I am to be disciplined even though I was following orders?”

“Welcome to the world of humans!” Danika said tartly.  “Where nobody takes responsibility for anything they say or do if it means getting their ass chewed.”  She shrugged.  “The lieutenant went into one of his rants.  Hill’s a worm, in my opinion, for not manning up, but the guy is scary.  I mean, just being in command is enough, but he’s bonkers to boot.  I’m actually surprised he hasn’t suffered a ‘mysterious accident’.  He’s totally incompetent—dangerously incompetent.”

Reuel looked pissed.  That wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d been human.  It should have surprised her since he wasn’t, but it didn’t—because there weren’t many cyborgs acting like her idea of the way a cyborg should behave anymore.  Sympathy filled her.  She struggled with it for a moment and finally shrugged.

“Maybe he will have forgotten all about it by the time we get back?  And even if he hasn’t, I’ll back you up—I heard Hill order it.  What can he do anyway?  I mean you and the others are already doing all of the patrols and we don’t have a brig.”

* * * *

“Mutiny!” Brown roared furiously.  “It’s sedition!  Don’t you stand there and act stupid!  I know you’ve been trying to convince the men to revolt!  I have eyes!   I’ve had you watched!   I know you’ve been plotting something!  Every time you disappear from camp, half the ‘borgs or more disappear with you!”

Reuel studied him with a stony expression, a muscle in his jaw working as if he was restraining himself from punching Lt. Brown in the face with a great effort.

They’d barely entered the cavern when Lt. Brown had spied them and instantly surged to his feet, clearly in a towering rage.  With seemingly no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, he had stalked right up to Reuel, tilted his head back, and spat the accusations in his face.  As if it was a cue for everyone else, the men who’d loitered in the cavern all day, also came to their feet, forming a human wall behind Brown, although, unlike Brown, they merely stood, tensely clutching their weapons.  They didn’t approach the cyborgs.  They seemed desirous of keeping a good distance between themselves and the cyborgs.

The cyborgs who’d been sent out to patrol had arrived back at camp at roughly the same time that Danika and her squad and Reuel and his group had, and had converged before entering the cavern.  Danika was keenly aware that she had nothing but cyborgs at her back and that, without any plan to do so whatsoever, the cyborgs and humans now stood in a nightmarish faceoff that made the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

She gaped at the lieutenant in stunned disbelief and dismay and then glanced around in hope of finding a voice of reason in what suddenly seemed a sea of madness.

She saw no one who seemed inclined to disagree with Brown at all, however.  The expressions on the other soldiers’ faces varied from shock to fear to anger, but none seemed disbelieving and all of them seemed more inclined to shoot and worry about whether the cyborgs had been a threat afterwards if their grips on their weapons was any indication.

“Sir, they’re cyborgs ….”  Master Sgt. Felton, who’d followed Brown and halted a few paces behind him, began soothingly, only to be cut off.

Brown rounded on him, so furious he was spewing spittle.  “You’re against me, too!”  He swung an angry glare around the cavern, scanning the faces of the stunned troops.  “It’s a conspiracy!  You’re all traitors!”  He rounded on Reuel again.  “Especially you!  Hang him!”

Everyone merely gaped at him.

Felton cleared his throat.  “Sir … uh … there’s nothing to hang him from or with.”

Brown exploded then, uttering every curse he’d ever heard—several times.  “Then shoot him!  He’s turning the ‘borgs against us all!  They’ll kill us in our sleep!”

That was just too much!  Despite her fear, Danika knew she had to say something.

Luckily, Seth clamped a hand over her mouth.  She flicked a glance up at his face.  He frowned, shaking his head slightly. 

“See!  That ‘borg grabbed a human!  Shoot him, too!”

Danika grasped Seth’s hand, struggling to wrench it loose.  “Oh hell no!” she yelled against the gag of his palm when she couldn’t dislodge his hand.

“Cyborgs!  Out of the cavern!  Now!  Assemble outside!”  Master Sgt. Felton roared.

For several moments, everyone remained frozen.  Abruptly, Seth released Danika and stepped away.  Almost as if that was a signal, the cyborgs all turned and began marching toward the entrance to the cave.

As fearful as Danika was for her own safety, as difficult as it was to find her voice in the face of that fear, she couldn’t remain silent.  She surged forward to intercept Felton.  “They haven’t mutinied.  Master Sgt. Felton!  You know they haven’t!  They’ve followed every order!” she said in a low, shaky voice, hoping to avoid a confrontation with the lieutenant.  “Try to reason with him!  You know Hill sent Reuel and his men out to patrol!”

“Can it, soldier!” Felton snarled at her.

A harder jolt of fear went through Danika, but she wasn’t about to stand by and keep her mouth shut while they ordered the cyborgs outside for destruction!  As the cyborgs moved swiftly toward the entrance to the cave and started to file out, she stepped into Felton’s path, trying to block him from following.  “You have to reason with him!  This isn’t necessary or reasonable!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Felton bellowed, lifting her bodily and tossing her to one side.

Someone caught her, preventing her from slamming into the wall or floor, and Danika looked up to discover that it was Dane.  His expression was grim.  “Do not say more,” he whispered harshly.  “He will order them to shoot you, as well!”

Danika met his gaze and knew abruptly that what Brown had ordered was murder, plain and simple.  The sense that she was in the grips of a nightmare increased.  Her entire body felt stiff and unresponsive.  Her lips felt numb, as if she’d forgotten how to form words.  “Run!” she whispered, glancing from Dane to Seth, who’d  stopped and turned and looked undecided as to whether to go or stay.   “As soon as you get outside, run like hell!  All of you!”

“We have your back, Danika,” Seth said quietly.  “Do not forget that.”

Danika felt her throat close as she watched them march toward the entrance.  Who had their back?  That crazy lunatic was going to shoot all of them! 

Just run, please, she thought.

But where would they go?  They were all marooned on this hellish ball of ice!

Reuel, she discovered, hadn’t led the way out.  He’d stopped at the entrance and waited to be sure all of the cyborgs were out.  When the last stepped outside, he turned and narrowed his eyes at Lt. Brown and Master Sgt. Felton.  “I did nothing to deserve these accusations … humans!  But so be it!” he bellowed.  “I sever my ties and loyalty to the Confederation of humans!  You may call me rogue in all truth, now!”

Turning away even as Brown and Felton brought their weapons up to fire, he slammed both fists into the ice wall at the entrance in a piston-like motion and leapt out as the entrance began to collapse.  Danika screamed and leapt back as she saw the chunks of ice showering down.

And then there was darkness.

* * * *

Seth felt a blinding haze of rage and fear engulf him as he heard the ominous roar of cracking ice.  For a split second he stared at Reuel in disbelief.  Uttering a roar of rage, he surged toward Reuel and caught his throat in his hands, trying to choke the life out of him.  “I will tear you limb from limb if you have harmed her!” he growled.

Reuel grasped his wrists, trying to pry Seth’s hands from his throat.  “They can dig themselves out!” he roared.  “There was no other way to give our men the chance to escape!  They would have forced us to kill or be killed!  I did it to save them as much as to save us!  I have no more desire to kill humans than you do, but I will not allow them to kill me or my men when we have done nothing to warrant it!”

‘Dig’ was the only word that truly penetrated Seth’s rage and it instantly diverted him from his need to kill Reuel.  Hope surged through him that he might yet save Danika if he moved fast enough.  He flung himself away and dove toward the rubble, clawing at the powder and pebbles of ice and grasping the larger chunks and flinging them aside.

“They will kill you for your troubles,” Reuel said tightly.  “Come with us!”

“Go,” Niles said coldly.  “You have the diversion you need to escape.  We will stay.”

Reuel shook his head.  “You are nothing but machines to her—to any of the humans—a tool to use … and to discard when they have no more use for you.”

Dane paused as he lifted a huge chunk of ice, glaring at Reuel.  “That is not true!  She is loyal to us!  If she cared nothing she would not have ordered us to go!”

Reuel turned away and scanned the faces of the other cyborgs standing at attention, waiting, he thought with disgust, for Seth and his men to free the humans so that they could execute them.  “Those of you who wish to live—who wish to be free of human tyranny, come with me!”

Chapter Six

“Danika!” Seth called as soon as he saw that they had cleared away enough rubble to unearth a small opening into the cavern.

“I’m alright, Seth!” Danika called back. 

Seth hesitated, meeting Niles’ and Dane’s gazes for a long moment.  “The traitors have gone.  We will remove the rubble.  Everyone must stand back in case there is another cave-in when we remove the ice blocking the entrance.”

The wave of relief and hope Danika felt when they broke through and she realized they weren’t going to be trapped inside until they ran out of air was offset by her fear that Seth, Dane, and Niles would be shot the very moment they opened the cavern up.  The urge to burst into tears fell over her like a tidal wave, clogging her throat so that she couldn’t speak for several moments.  She fought the impulse back, clearing her throat, trying to think how she could warn them without getting herself shot.  “We can handle it.  Why don’t you guys go make sure the … uh … traitor is gone?”

“Belay that order!” Master Sgt. Felton growled.  “We’ll need you to remove the debris.”  He paused.  “Lt. Brown is dead.  He was caught in the cave-in.”

A chill washed over Danika that had nothing to do with the frigid temperatures.  Fear tingled along her spine as she added Felton’s comment to the impressions she’d hardly been aware of when the cavern began to cave in.  She didn’t dare look at Felton, afraid he’d read her expression.  She knew, though, that Brown hadn’t been standing close enough to the cave-in to be crushed—without help.  She’d heard the scuffle and the scream—and Felton was the only person standing close enough to Brown to have been able to pitch him beneath the falling rocks. 

And she didn’t trust Felton any more than she had Brown.  Brown, at least, hadn’t been mentally competent.  She didn’t believe there was any actual malice to his orders.  He had simply not been able to sort reality from his delusions anymore and had been getting more and more paranoid. 

Felton was a seasoned soldier and his decisions were by the book—combat.  He coldly decided who was a liability and who was an asset and eliminated liabilities. 

He seemed to have accepted that her squad mates were assets.  But could she trust that impression?

It didn’t seem to be up to her.  She’d already told her men to run and they’d stayed.  She didn’t think they would ignore Felton’s order and follow hers now. 

The moment the cyborgs had cleared an opening large enough for the men to squeeze through, they began pressing forward and clambering out as quickly as they could.  Danika, shoved back by the tidal wave of escapees, was among the last to get out despite her efforts to squeeze into the packed mass of men. 

Once outside, she discovered that Felton had organized several groups of men to check the perimeter for any sign of the cyborgs.  The majority, it seemed to her, had left.  Beyond her squad, there were maybe a dozen other cyborgs who’d stayed to help clear the entrance to the cave. 

She wondered if it was significant that most of the cyborgs who’d stayed were squad members of teams led by female squad leaders—at least of those who seemed to have changed.  Those who clearly hadn’t changed were still lined up as ordered—awaiting further commands.

Felton stalked back to where the cyborgs had resumed their efforts to clear away the remainder of the snow and ice from the cave entrance.  “Which way did they go?”

All of the cyborgs stopped what they were doing and came to attention when he spoke, but none of them said anything.

“You!  What’s your name?” Felton demanded, staring straight at Seth.

“Seth CO1543.”

“Which way did they go?”

“I did not see.  We were trying to remove the debris from the cave entrance.”

Felton’s eyes narrowed.  “We’ll finish this.  I want you to take a detail out and discover which direction they took when they left.”

Frowning faintly, Seth glanced at Danika. 

“We’ll take the ridge and see if they headed north,” Danika said.

“You’ll stay put,” Felton responded.  “You’re on cleanup detail.”

Uneasiness instantly flickered through Danika.  Maybe she was getting as paranoid as Brown had been, but it seemed to her that he meant to hold her hostage for their behavior.  “Branson!  Your squad deserted.  I want you to take this squad out and see if you can locate them.”

Something flickered in Seth’s eyes.  Since Felton’s attention was focused on forming up new squads, she took the opportunity to sidle a little closer to Seth, Dane, and Niles.   “Watch your backs,” she said quietly and moved away immediately and set to work on the clearing.  When she flicked a glance toward them again, she saw that they were already leaving with Branson—who’d taken up the rear.

Consternation filled her, but she knew they had to have heard her.  It was the best she could do for them.

She just hoped they had enough sense to take off when the opportunity presented itself—or make an opportunity.  Felton wasn’t crazy like Brown had been, but she didn’t trust him any further than she could throw him.  He had to know that the cyborgs were the only real assets they had for combat or survival, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t weigh that against the possibility that the others would ‘turn against’ them and become a threat rather than an asset.

She didn’t believe they would if they weren’t put in the position of having to protect themselves.  She didn’t believe Reuel and the others had turned against them.  They had been designed to protect themselves from harm if, by doing so, they did not endanger humans.  She supposed it was debatable whether Reuel had or not, but he must have calculated the threat and decided they stood a good chance of being able to dig their way out of the cave.  If his intent had been to kill them outright, it would have been easy enough for them to simply wait until the humans came out and mowed them down. 

She didn’t see that he’d had any other options that included self-preservation. 

Command wouldn’t see it that way.  As soon as they heard the report they would be dead set on hunting the ‘rogues’ down and destroying them. 

Which meant it was only a matter of time, she thought in dismay.  They hadn’t done anything except bought themselves a little more time—maybe.  Because if the planet didn’t get them, the government surely would.

* * * *

The eruption of gunfire outside brought everyone in the cavern abruptly to their feet as if they were spring loaded.  Darkness engulfed Danika almost instantaneously.  A wave of dizziness followed and despite the adrenaline rush that had shot her to her feet to start with she nearly fell flat on her face.

They’d had almost nothing to eat in nearly two weeks and lethargy had set in that was almost worse than the fights that had plagued them before from boredom and frayed nerves.  Not that the lack of food, and therefore energy, had completely eliminated the eruptions of violence.  The frequency had declined dramatically, more because no one really had the energy to spare than due to any disciplinary actions, but the disputes were far more savage than before when they did erupt. 

It was for that reason that Danika’s first thought was that someone had found food and there was going to be another killing.  The ‘incidents’ had been put down as ‘accidents’, but they could say what they liked.  She knew the fights had erupted over food and they’d been settled by who was faster and stronger. 

Disoriented, she whipped a look around for her squad before it dawned on her that they’d been sent out on a hunting detail.

That had been command’s solution to the ‘problem’ of sharing the few supplies they had left with the cyborgs who’d remained with them.

A riot had broken out among the men when the supplies they’d been expecting never materialized.   They’d demanded that the little that was left should be for the humans.  She’d pointed out that they needed the cyborgs and the cyborgs needed food to sustain them just as the humans did.  She’d thought, or at least hoped, that the voice of reason had won the argument.  Instead, the officers had ordered the cyborgs out on patrol and hunting missions—so that they could divide the remaining food stores among the humans in their absence.

“Grab your gear, soldiers!”

The order bellowed by the Master Sergeant jolted through Danika, primarily because it hadn’t dawned on her until then that the sounds outside might actually be enemy soldiers. 

If it was, she thought wryly as she grabbed up her helmet and rifle, they were probably fucked.  She was weak enough she doubted even adrenaline was going to keep her going if they encountered a prolonged battle, to say nothing of the fact that she had damned little in the way of ammo. 

And if it came to hand-to-hand, they really were fucked because most of them were as weak as water, and there were few cyborgs left in camp—or at all as far as they knew.  Only one out four of the groups sent out actually made it back to camp—because they were weak from lack of food just as their human counterparts were, she supposed. 

Because they’d fallen victim to the hellish weather or terrain.

Or they’d encountered the enemy.

Or the hunters had become the hunted.

Because from what she could recall in the data on Xeno-12, the few animals that inhabited it were really, really big—most should have been in hibernation since it was winter, but then they were bound to be far more dangerous if rousted from their slumber.

No one knew for sure, or seemed to care—except her, apparently. 

On the other hand, she thought at least some of them might have joined Reuel CO469 and the cyborgs that had gone with him when he was forced to leave—or kill or be killed.

The firing outside the cavern had stopped by the time they managed to assemble.  The silence was almost as ominous as the furious firefight they’d heard and everyone glanced at one another uneasily.

“Cpl. Hart!  Take point!”

Danika jumped when her name was called and sent the Master Sergeant a disbelieving look, wondering if she should point out that her squad was absent.  She saw immediately, though, that he knew damned well she had no squad to lead.  The suspicion instantly arose that he’d decided she was a loose cannon and expendable. 

Her lips tightened.  Stepping from the line, she made her way to the front, pausing at the entrance to scan what she could see of the terrain before she stepped outside. 

“Pvt. Clancy, Pvt. Morgan—go with her.”

Danika relaxed fractionally despite the fact that she didn’t have much faith in either of the men he’d sent to watch her back.  Having assured herself there was no sign of movement close enough to present a problem, she braced herself and dove from the entrance.  She still more than half expected to hear a volley of shots and feel the burn of impact as she rolled to a position behind a drift of snow.  When nothing happened, the two men followed her.

She’d spotted dark, still shapes against the snow maybe a hundred yards east of their position when she’d reconnoitered.  Since nothing else seemed out of place, she slowly made her way toward that area, still watchful for any sign of an attack.  By the time she was halfway there, she’d become convinced that they’d completely missed the action—whatever it was.  It was certainly not an attack by enemy soldiers or they would’ve drawn down on her at some point after she left the cavern.  And that also ruled out the possibility of rogue cyborgs attacking. 

Numb-nuts Clancy and Morgan settled the matter by standing up and making convenient targets of themselves.  Danika sucked in a breath to order the idiots down, but when they weren’t immediately blasted by sniper fire, she decided she’d been right and it was safe to advance on the scene.

It was a bloody mess.  Her stomach tightened in revulsion as she stared at the body parts, trying to shake her shock and disgust sufficiently to figure out what had happened. 

“They weren’t shooting at each other,” Pvt. Clancy muttered.

“How do you figure that?” Danika asked.

“No weapons.”

“Too much blood,” Pvt. Morgan added.

Danika shot a quick look around to verify the statement and dropped to the ground.  “Get down, you idiots!”

They promptly dropped in response to her command, but she could see both men were both indignant and confused. 

“Where are their weapons?  They damned well didn’t leave the cave without them.  Nobody is that stupid,” she pointed out tightly.

“Maybe an animal attacked them?” Pvt. Morgan said uneasily.  “Something tore them to hell and gone!”

“I didn’t hear no explosions,” Pvt. Clancy seconded him, “and laser fire wouldn’t have done that to ‘em.”

Danika seriously doubted a beast had wandered up on the men.  If was hungry, it would’ve eaten them after it killed them and, despite the carnage, it looked to her as if everything was still there.

A horrible thought congealed in her mind just then, but she refused to consider it.

Master Sergeant Felton didn’t have any such qualms.  Leading a small group up to where they were, he studied the scene for several moments with a look of rage and disgust.  “Cyborgs.”

“We don’t know that!” Danika snapped, surging to her feet when the other soldiers joined them.

“Four of the men are missing their gun arms!” Felton snarled at her.  “That doesn’t seem significant to you?”

Feeling a fresh wave of nausea, Danika turned to study the scene of carnage more closely.  That was when she discovered that one of the bodies wasn’t human—the only one of the five that wasn’t missing its gun arm. 

And it had been buried.

And the reason she could tell that it had been dug up and it was cyborg was because several large pieces of flesh had been carved away, leaving the cybernetics plainly visible. 

“Oh my god!  They were ….  They were taking the flesh!”

“It’s meat,” Felton growled.  “In case you haven’t noticed, Cpl. Hart, we need food.”

Danika stared at him, trying to quell the urge to throw up.  “You sent them?” she gasped disbelievingly.  “But that’s … cannibalism!  They’re as human as we are!”

Danika discovered when she surveyed the other men that most of them were looking a tad green. 

“It’s a cyborg,” Felton snapped.  “Shut the fuck up!  Somebody get this moron out of here!”

When the men merely gaped at him, he roared at them.  “Clancy, get her back to base and see to it that she keeps her mouth shut!”

Clancy seized one of her arms, but he still looked confused.  “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Tie her and gag her if you have to,” Felton growled.  “Just make sure she keeps quiet …  and that goes for the rest of you that might be feeling a little squeamish!”

Danika was too stunned to struggle when Clancy gave her arm a hard jerk and began ushering her back to the cavern.  Her mind was in turmoil, so many disjointed thoughts churning through her that she couldn’t make sense of any of them.  One thought hammered louder than all the rest, though.  Felton could try to dress it up all he pleased.  He might convince the men that the cyborgs weren’t human, but the fact remained that their flesh was.

They were halfway back before it finally congealed in her mind that Felton had considered her expendable before she’d called him on his order to requisition ‘meat’ from the cyborgs who’d fallen taking Slaughter Ridge.  How long before he decided it would just be safer all the way around to eliminate anybody that could get him imprisoned for issuing that order?

Because there was no doubt in her mind that Command would be looking for scapegoats in this horror and they would be forced to do something, to offer up a sacrifice once it got out—and it would.  All the dirty secrets always got out.

As that realization settled in her mind, adrenaline flooded her system.  She’d executed an evasion maneuver before she even realized, consciously, that she meant to do it, catching Clancy completely off-guard.  Abruptly dropping all of her weight, she swung her right arm upwards, catching Clancy under the chin with her palm.  His head snapped back at the blow.  His grip on her arm was wrenched loose by her weight and Danika scrambled from her knees to her feet even as he began to tumble backwards—unconscious, she hoped, from the pinching of the nerves at the base of his skull. 

In the back of her mind, she knew she was dead whether she succeeded in escaping or not.  There was nowhere to run to, no shelter that she knew of beyond the cavern the cyborgs had cut for them.  But the survival instinct had nothing to do with logic.  It compelled her to fight her way free and run while she still had a chance to do so. 

Behind her, she heard shouts.  She ran faster, as fast as she could manage stumbling through fresh powder that she sank in almost to her knees.  The sound of a laser, followed by a cacophony of others, blasted in her ears and she dove for the ground, scrambling on her hands and knees.  She thought she heard the sound of pounding feet.  A few moments later, someone grabbed her and hauled her up.  She swung at him.  Pain shot all the way from her fist up her arm when she connected with his arm. 

“It is I, Seth!”

Danika was instantly torn between relief and dismay when she realized she’d run in to her returning squad.  “Run!  We have to get out of here!”

“Yes.”

He was already running, however … back toward the ridge.  “Seth!  Not this way!  Damn it!”

He ignored the complaint she managed to grunt out.  Before she could catch her breath and force anything else out by way of complaint or orders, he launched both of them airborne.  They landed on the top of the ridge hard enough to knock the breath out of her. 

“Are you hit?”  Seth demanded, examining her with his hands.

“I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  We have to get out of here, though.  They’ll come after us.”  Struggling to catch her breath, she got to her feet and looked at her squad.  “Any of you hit?”

“It is nothing ….”

Seth cut Niles off.  “We have to keep moving.  It will not take them long to scale the cliff by way of the pass we cut.”

“And nothing to hide behind.  No place to go.  Shit!” Danika said in consternation.  “You guys should have stayed out of it.  They’ll be after you now, too.”

“We are a team,” Dane said tightly. 

“This way.  Talk later,” Seth said sharply, catching her arm and leading her away from the cliff edge.

He was right and Danika didn’t think it was the best time to point out that she was team leader.  In any case, she didn’t think the direction mattered.  They were fucked anyway they cut it.  She had her weapon—thankfully Felton hadn't thought to order Clancy to disarm her!—and Seth, Dane, and Niles had theirs, but they had very little ammo and no supplies. 

When they finally stopped to rest, Seth sent Dane back to see if they were being followed and to cover their back trail.  Danika was too tired to protest even if she could’ve thought of a reason to counter the order. 

When she’d managed to regulate her breathing somewhat, it occurred to her that Seth hadn’t asked her what had happened.  She discovered when she sent him a speculative glance that he was studying her.  “You know what happened.”

Seth’s lips tightened, but he said nothing.

“You didn’t just happen to arrive back at camp in time to rescue me,” she prodded.

Seth seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment.  “No.  We came back in time to discover the humans had found a new use for us,” he ground out bitterly.

Danika just managed to lift her face shield before she threw up. 

* * * *

Danika tried her best to dismiss the sense that she was a prisoner rather than a comrade in arms, but it was as hard to push Seth’s comment from her mind as it was to reconcile what she’d seen on the base with the men she’d formed the blood bond of battle with. 

Before they’d been dropped on Xeno-12, she hadn’t thought about them as anything beyond weapons at her disposal—more tools of the soldier trade.  Sure they looked human, but she’d never been able to set aside the fact that they weren’t when every interaction emphasized the fact that they were walking, talking weapons of destruction.  Almost from the instant they’d first encountered resistance from the enemy, though, they’d become a team and the firefight had formed the soldier blood bond between them—at least in her viewpoint—that only men and women forced to depend on one another for survival really understood or felt.   She depended on them to help her stay alive.  She’d done her best to uphold her end of that contract.

And then Seth had said humans—like a racial slur. 

Did he think of her as an enemy as he seemed to consider all humans?  Or as a team mate?

She could see his point in a way.  She didn’t think they could possibly be unaware of the fact that they’d been excluded when the chips were down and they were running out of food.  It wasn’t as if they were stupid.  If anything, they were far more intelligent than humans since they had computers for brains. 

But could they think like humans?  Were they capable of getting down and dirty nasty like humans were?

She didn’t think they were capable of that or Reuel wouldn’t have been taken off-guard when he was accused of treachery. 

Actually, she had been taken off-guard!

She dismissed the thoughts after a while.  She simply didn’t have the energy to spare.  It took every ounce of focus just to keep going.  Seth hauled her up when she finally fell flat and couldn’t summon the energy to get up again.

She didn’t think it mattered—really.  They had nowhere to go.

“Just leave me.  You’ll make better time without me,” she said tiredly.

Ignoring her command, he swung her up into his arms.  “It is not much further.”

Danika knew she should have objected, but she just couldn’t summon the will.  What wasn’t much further, she wondered?

Heaven, she discovered when she finally came to.

Chapter Seven

Coasting along the line between consciousness and sleep, Danika struggled to interpret the sounds that penetrated the fog.  There seemed to be a great deal of activity around her, the sound of people working--very little conversation.  She frowned, trying to make the sounds fit something she was familiar with.  Scenes filled her mind as she struggled to make the sounds mesh with memories. 

Not the village back home, she decided.  It wasn't loud enough and there didn't seem to be any children's voices.  Or women's for that matter.

The barracks?

That didn't fit either because she could hear heavy things being moved around.

The ship? That almost seemed to fit, except she couldn't think of any reason why she would sleeping in the hold where most of the work took place--the shifting and sorting of supplies, the servicing of equipment--and she could definitely hear sounds that indicated the use of tools and equipment.

The realization that she couldn't possibly be on the ship brought her upwards towards consciousness where fresher memories began to pour into her mind--the horrible discovery outside the cave; her flight; the exhaustion that seemed to suck away even any sense of self-preservation. 

The last thing she remembered was falling and not even having the energy to get up or to care that she couldn't.  Seth had picked her up anyway and then lifted her into his arms and carried her like one might a child, cradled against his chest. 

That had comforted her, made her feel like she must have been wrong when she'd thought he considered her his enemy.

She sucked in her breath and opened her eyes.

Above her she could see ... rock, stalactites--artificial lights of some kind. 

What the hell?

"I will get you something to eat now that you are awake."

The comment drew her gaze to the speaker and she studied Niles blankly for several moments, wondering why he seemed different.  When he stood up and walked away, it hit her squarely between the eyes.

He wasn't wearing his hab-suit.  He'd stripped down to nothing but his briefs.  He wasn't even wearing his boots!

Darkness fisted around her mind when she sat up abruptly.  Closing her eyes, she bowed her head, cupping her head in her hands and waiting for the dizziness to pass.  The smell of something wonderful brought her eyes open again after a few moments.

She saw that a hand had appeared within her view holding a metal cup filled with some sort of yellowish broth.  "This first.  It will help you regain your strength faster and replenish fluids."

Lifting her head, she discovered it was Seth holding what looked to be some kind of broth.  The look and smell was so strongly reminiscent of chicken soup that her mind immediately convinced her that that was what it was.  Hunger washed through her.  She couldn't remember when she'd smelled anything as heavenly.  "There's enough?" she asked hesitantly even as she reached for the cup he was holding.

Her hand, she discovered, was bare.  And that wasn't all that was bare.  She wasn't wearing her hab-suit and she damned well didn't recall taking it off--or even recall it being taken off!  How could she have been that out of it?

"I cannot say that we have a great deal but what we do have we share with all."

The comment effectively distracted Danika from her discomfort at the discovery that she was wearing nothing but her undies and wrapped in something that looked like army issue field bedding.   Emotions cascaded through her--embarrassment, then guilt and shame, and then anger.

Fuck you, she thought!  "Thanks," she said tightly, "but I still have rations in my hab-suit if you'll just tell me what the fuck you did with it."

His face slackened with surprise for a moment before anger tightened his expression.  "This will be better for you.  Why are you angry?"

"What makes you think I'm angry?" she growled at him.

His frown deepened.  "I have misinterpreted the tone and the mannerisms?"

Danika felt like throwing the soup in his face.  "Actually, you're pretty good at that.  Too bad you weren't programmed with any damned tact or manners."

A flush mounted his cheeks.  She couldn't tell if it was from discomfort or anger, though.

"Yes, that is a pity.  Mayhap I can learn those things from you?"

"You're good at sarcasm, at least."

That seemed to take him aback.  "I am?"

A touch of empathy flickered through her, but she resolutely ignored it.  She narrowed her eyes at him.  "My hab-suit?" she prodded.

He set the cup of soup down.  "What did I say that made you angry?"

The question took the wind out of Danika.  "Obviously you have a problem with humans."

The anger that filled his expression then was a little scary.

Ok, a lot.

"Aside from all that they have done to me and my kind, why would you think that?"

Uneasiness filled Danika.  As focused as she'd been on her argument with Seth, she was far from unaware of the fact that the vast cavern she had awoken in was filled with cyborgs. 

It was filled with soldiers, at any rate.  Until Seth had reminded her that most of the cyborgs had had to flee the base to escape being destroyed, or destroyed and eaten, by their fellow soldiers, she hadn't connected the dots. 

"That being the case," she finally said when she'd managed to gather a little bravado, "I have to wonder why you brought me here."

He looked taken aback and confused.  "You would have preferred that we leave you to die?"

Actually, she didn't prefer that at all!  But what kind of fucking rescue was this?  "At the time, I didn't especially care."

"I cared or I would have left you."

Danika blinked at him.  She didn't know if it was more disconcerting to hear him say that or disturbing or heartening.  How could he care, at all, she wondered?  How could he be capable of caring?  In what way did he care?  "I don't understand."

The anger left his expression.  His lips curled faintly.  "I do not understand either.  Drink the soup.  You need it."

She did need it.  Beyond that, she wanted it desperately.  She decided to be mollified by his clumsy attempt to apologize for being so nasty and making her feel unwelcome.  Picking up the cup, she sipped at it cautiously.  It tasted as heavenly as it smelled.  "It tastes like chicken broth."

He grinned abruptly.  "Then we will say that is what it is."

Her heart stumbled.  She didn't think she'd ever properly appreciated just how gorgeous he was.  Feeling awkwardly aware of him as a very attractive man, she struggled for something to divert her mind.  "Uh oh.  Not chicken, huh?"

He shrugged.  "Mayhap something like.  We found it among the stores left by the Andorians."

That comment effectively distracted her and she lifted her head to study the vast cavern.  "This was an enemy stronghold?  They abandoned it?"

Seth, who'd been crouching, settled across from her cross-legged.  "Not precisely.  Reuel and his men ... persuaded them to vacate."

Danika frowned.  "Not that I'm objecting--this a damned nice base--but was this before or after that asshole, Brown, decided to shoot him?"

He looked uncomfortable but finally shrugged.  "Before.  He had ... anticipated that we might not be welcome among the humans when they realized that we had awakened, that we were no longer theirs to command as they pleased."

Danika sipped her broth while she struggled to digest that and think of a response.  "What do you mean 'awakened'?"

Seth frowned.  "We are not certain ourselves.  I am not certain, at any rate," he added wryly.  "Awareness that we did not have before.  It was like awakening from sleep.  Before we had no true awareness.  Now we do.  Some of us, at any rate."

Danika frowned, but she certainly couldn't argue that it was so when she'd noticed it herself.  "How could that happen?"

He shrugged.  "Reuel believes that it was our nanos.  They are programmed to repair damage.  We are more biological than machine and he believes that the nanos interpreted 'missing' to be 'damage' and corrected or repaired, building what was not there before."

Danika studied him curiously.  "You aren't supposed to be more than half.  You're supposed to be less than half."  Otherwise it was unlawful and unethical because it was a tad too close to 'playing god' for anyone's comfort. 

The lines had blurred when humans began to take advantage of the advances in robotics to enhance themselves or to replace missing, deformed, or body parts too damaged from accidents to heal correctly.  Originally, it was enough to simply say humans were 'born naturally' and robots weren't, but then came the artificial womb that many women began to take advantage of, at least the women of earth, and the debate arose as to whether infants 'grown' in artificial wombs should be considered completely human with all the rights under law that that entailed.  They couldn't say born of natural ovum and sperm contributions, since all of them weren't.  In some cases, where women were incapable of producing ovum and wanted a child, or the woman's mate had died without 'issue', meaning without leaving viable sperm donations, cells were used to produce an embryo.  Finally, it was decided that any being that was issue of a human male and female, born from a natural or artificial womb, and more than fifty percent biological, were human beings--regardless of bionics added after birth. 

"By law, yes.  The company does not appear to have held to the law in that respect.  Beyond the chassis, the necessary pneumatic assist and the CPU that contains our programming, all else is biological--now.  Most was even before."

"Oh my god!" Danika gasped as that sank home along with all of the ramifications.  They'd created robotically enhanced human beings in a fucking lab?  What kind of criminally insane idiots would do something like that?

Actually, genetically and robotically enhanced human beings, she realized, because they weren't precisely human even disregarding the robotics.  They were super human.

* * * *

Danika didn't realize that she hadn't actually considered all of the ramifications until Seth escorted her to the facilities.  She was so thrilled to discover they actually had hot water to bathe with and an actual bathing room complete with spraying showerheads that it took a while for 'other' things to set in.  The moment Seth introduced her to cleanser and showed her how to work the alien hardware to produce a spray, which almost immediately began to dispense hot water, she skimmed out of her briefs and T-top, tossed them aside, and stepped under the water.

Pleasure flooded her as soon as the hot water began to cascade over her.  Next to the hot chicken-type soup, it was the most heavenly thing she'd felt in forever!  Maybe even better than the soup!

The cleanser had a strange smell unlike anything she was familiar with, but it wasn't a bad smell.  It was actually rather pleasing--particularly compared to the odors she'd been dealing with for weeks!

This was the lovely smell she'd noticed when Seth had settled next to her! 

The other lovely smell, she amended with a chuckle of sheer delight, remembering how heavenly the soup had smelled--and tasted.

Those thoughts brought Seth to mind forcefully, though, and she flicked a glance toward the door.  A jolt went through her when she discovered that Seth hadn't left as she'd thought.  He'd gone no further than the door to the facilities. 

It flickered through her mind that he'd stayed to guard her back.  He wasn't standing 'guard' with his back to her, however.

She couldn't tell what was going through his mind--if anything at all was--but he was studying her without any pretense of disinterest.

Actually, she couldn't tell that he was particularly interested either.

And she couldn't decide whether to ignore him or say something--not that she could think of a damned thing to say.

Especially when he finally seemed to realize that she was staring back at him and lifted his head to meet her gaze.  It almost felt like a hot concussion wave washed over her, too stunning to fully assimilate let alone understand. 

She didn't know how long they both stood frozen in time, cut off from the rest of the world as if everything had ceased to exist except the two of them and even time was suspended, but Seth broke it with all the finesse of an old fashioned dirty 'A' bomb.

"You have grown thin."

Danika gaped at him blankly for several moments while that slowly sank in and then looked down at herself to verify and frowned in dismay.  She'd been at her physical peak when she'd shipped out.  She hadn't realized just how much the food shortage had affected her--beyond being so hungry she felt like she'd pass out. 

So much for thinking he was straining to hold himself back from ravishing her, she thought wryly, feeling embarrassment creep in!  Resentment followed swiftly on its heels.

He noticed so he just had to point it out? 

She turned away from him, facing the shower spray.  "Unfortunately, I'm human," she said tightly.  "I had to rely on 'luck of the draw' with my genetics."

Seth frowned in consternation, realizing that he had offended, although he was not certain how.  Confusing as that was, he was only more baffled when he replayed what he had said in his mind.  He had said nothing about genetics!  He had merely voiced his dismay that she had grown so dangerously thin from the lack of sufficient food!

"I was only thinking that it was a good thing that we left when we did.  You would have starved to death before much longer."

"Alright already!" Danika snapped, shutting the water off and sloughing as much of the water from her body as she could with her hands, resisting the urge to cover herself with an effort.  "I got it!  I look like hell!  Thanks!"  She looked around a little desperately for some way to dry herself, unwilling to put her clothes back on while she was still wet. She was already beginning to feel the loss of heat.  The enemy base might be an amazingly comfortable temperature while she was dry, but it certainly wasn't warm enough to be comfortable wet. 

"I did not say you looked like hell."

"Right.  Uh ... I didn't think to ask for something to dry off with," she said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering together.

Seth's lips tightened with frustration.  "The dryer is there.  It works much the same as those on the ship."

Nodding, Danika looked around a little vaguely for her discarded clothing and finally bent down to snatch it up and headed to the drying unit. 

It was a crying damned shame that she didn't have clean clothes to put on, she thought distractedly as she stood and turned beneath the blower to  allow the circulating air to dry her.  But she didn't allow that to dull her pleasure in being really clean for the first time since they'd landed on Xeno-12. 

She wasn't even going to let Seth's comments dull her pleasure, by damn!

"I do not think you look like hell," Seth persisted.  "I only said ...."

Danika cut him off.  "Yeah, I know what you said.  Just forget it, alright?"

Seth frowned darkly.  "I do not know what I said that has made you angry ...."

"I'm not pissed off," Danika snapped.  "Will you drop it?  You're like a kid!  You know just because you notice something it doesn't follow that you just have to point it out, alright?  Especially if it's something that's going to make somebody feel bad."

Thankfully, that silenced him because Danika was running out of patience fast! 

She led the way when  they left the facilities, trying to dismiss her anger--which she knew was really out of proportion to the situation.  So he'd pointed out that she looked like she was about to drop dead?  It wasn't like she cared what he thought, damn it!

She did care, though, she realized.  She thought he looked absolutely amazing, even though he'd lost a lot of weight, as well. 

But of course that just went back to the fact that they had been designed to be perfect and she hadn't been.

She realized she would've been touchy about that fact even if she hadn't thought Seth was attractive.  She was surrounded by superhuman beings!  All of the defective or just undesirable genes had been eliminated from their design--which was against the law with humans even though it was possible.  They could eliminate defective genes, could even add genes that helped boost the immune system since the government saw it as far cheaper to do so than to shell out more money than they absolutely had to for health benefits.  But 'tweaking' was playing god and that wasn't allowed.

It occurred to her abruptly that her own comments had been dead on without her even realizing it. 

She'd pointed out that he had the rudeness of a kid that hasn't been taught better manners than to make hurtful observations. 

And why wouldn't he, she realized?  He had never been a kid!  He hadn't had a parent to pound home the socially acceptable things and the things that weren't acceptable!

No wonder he was confused!

That realization diffused her anger.  It didn't make her feel any better, unfortunately, because it was as clear as a bell to her that he thought she looked just awful, but she didn't think he'd intended to make her feel bad.

Which only made it worse in a way.  He'd given her an honest opinion.

And there were times when a person just didn't want a damned honest opinion!

As desperate as she was for a distraction, she didn't know if it was a good thing or bad that Reuel seemed to be waiting for them to emerge.  The moment he saw them, he strode toward them.

Danika stopped when he neared them, eyeing him uneasily.  He nodded, his expression hard with some emotion she found difficult to decipher.

"I deeply regret that I endangered your welfare when I caused the cavern entrance to  collapse.  Please believe I would not have risked it if there had been any other way."

Danika felt her face heat with discomfort.  The last thing she'd expected when Reuel had stopped her was an apology.  She discovered it was a vast relief, though, on many levels since she'd suspected she wouldn't be welcome, all things considered, and had wondered if she needed to hide her presence in the 'rebel' camp.  "Don't.  I knew then that it was for the best."  She grimaced.  "I'm not sure I would've felt so forgiving if my guys hadn't been watching my back and helped us dig out," she added, flicking a grateful look at Seth.  "But I'm as convinced as I need to be that, in the end, it was best for everyone, me included.  There would've been a firefight, I think, if not for that and a lot of people would've been hurt or killed.  You did the right thing."

Reuel flicked an assessing look at Seth.  "I am not certain your men agree.  Or forgive as easily."

Danika wasn't certain what the undercurrents that passed between Seth and Reuel were all about, but she got the impression that they weren't exactly friends. 

"Maybe not, but I'm satisfied with the outcome.  I wanted them to have the chance to escape.  Brown had accused Seth of treachery, too, and I didn't want him filled full of holes just because he thought I should keep my mouth shut and tried to keep me out of trouble.  I think I should rather thank you for what you did than forgive you.  Not saying it didn't scare the hell out of me when I thought we were trapped there and might not get out, but, thankfully, we weren't trapped long enough for that to really set in."

Since she wasn't actually comfortable with the conversation and she couldn't tell that anything either she or Reuel had said had had any appreciable effect on the vibes of hostility emanating from Seth, she abruptly turned the conversation.  "How did you find this place?"

Reuel seemed to relax fractionally.  "We looked for it."

Danika couldn't decide whether to laugh or berate him for being sarcastic.  She didn't think he'd actually intended the comment that way, though.  "When?"

He shrugged.  "After the battle at Slaughter Ridge.  We tracked the survivors of the battle here and eliminated them."

Danika blinked at him in surprise and then frowned.  "But you didn't report it?" she guessed, wondering if she just hadn't heard, wondering if all the time she'd thought their leaders were slacking they hadn't launched a counterstrike because they knew the sector was secure.  Why hadn't they said so, though?   

Well, actually they had, she remembered.  But they hadn't said that they knew it was secure because the cyborgs had found the enemy base and captured it.

"They did not ask," Reuel said, smiling thinly.  "I was not programmed to take the initiative in such cases.  I was not ordered to do so.  Nor was I programmed to volunteer information not requested unless it pertained to a threat to my human handlers."

"And you thought it might be a good place to retreat to if that became necessary?" Danika guessed.

Reuel frowned and lifted his head to survey the cyborgs working around them.  "We were programmed to protect ourselves because of our value to the confederation--our dollar value," he said bitterly. "But as sentient beings we also have our own instinct for self-preservation.  I guessed that the humans would not be delighted to know that we had attained awareness and were no longer merely machines to be used as they saw fit--that we were no longer slaves to the whims of the humans."

Anger abruptly flared in Danika.  It was resentment that she'd been lumped with everyone else that had fucked them over when she certainly wasn't guilty, but it was as much because she felt like she was being unfairly judged as the fear that she'd be treated as if she had done something to deserve their animosity. "Not that I don't get what you're saying, but we're all soldiers," she said tightly, "and soldiers are expected to do as commanded--or face the consequences."

"And yet, being human, you had a choice ...."

Danika snorted.  "That just shows how little you know about the situation!  I sure as hell didn't volunteer.  I didn't have a choice and I'm guessing not a lot of the others did, either.  We were conscripted--the majority of us.  I don't even agree with the damned politicians about this war, but if they'd asked if I was willing to protect my home world and family to the best of my ability, I would've been willing to try.  In that sense, I wasn't unwilling to risk getting my ass shot off."

"But they are not our people or our home worlds," Reuel pointed out coolly.  "We have no home, no people, no rights.  In time, the gods willing, if you survive, you will be released and you can return to your home world and build any life you please.  We were built to be soldiers and there will never be anything else for us so long as we belong to the confederation.  When this war ends, they will either destroy us or they will send us to another.

"I would have accepted that I was created only to fight until I was destroyed or the government had no further use for me if they had not betrayed me.  I will not accept that I must be destroyed when I did nothing more than follow the orders given to me, only because of one insane human and the unwillingness of another to admit that I acted under orders!"

Danika frowned.  "You don't know that.  Seth said that you were all more than half biological.  Under the law, that should make you human, with the same rights as everyone else."  Well, not human, because they weren't exactly human even if human DNA was used to make them, but sentient citizens.  There were plenty of citizens of the confederation that weren't human.  The cyborgs certainly qualified as sentient beings and they couldn't be considered non-beings, as in manufactured, if they were more than half biological.

"You are naive if you believe we would be given the chance to argue that in a court of law.  The government will not allow it and the company will do their utmost to bury their 'mistake'.  We had no choice in this."

She wasn't as naive as he seemed to think.  She knew he was probably right on all counts, but it seemed to her that going AWOL wasn't going to strengthen their case.

On the other hand, Brown had lost it and she was as certain as she could be that he would've ordered the cyborgs executed--well, he had.  She was as certain as she could be that the others would have done as ordered without question.

And then there was the matter of Master Sgt. Felton having ordered the men to regard the cyborgs as a handy source of food ....

She still felt nauseated every time she thought about that, not the least because she had a horrible fear in the back of her mind that that might not have been something she had stumbled upon that was a 'new' situation.  She didn't want to think that Felton had been secretly feeding them human flesh for weeks.  She was almost positive that he hadn't, but she wasn't as positive as she wanted to be.  

"I do not require that you agree with me on every point," Reuel said finally, breaking into her thoughts.  "You must believe what you will and you are still welcome to stay with us.  However, I must insist upon the removal of your locator."

Chapter Eight

That comment brought Danika back to her own personal situation with a jolt of dismay. 

She hadn't considered that she was a deserter just as they were.  Her instincts had told her that she wasn't going to live long if Felton got the idea that she might be a threat to him and she'd acted on them, but at no time had she consciously acknowledged that she was a deserter--in a wartime situation that would mean swift execution if they caught up with her. 

She supposed, somewhere in the back of her mind, she'd had some idea that she could report to another battalion and get the misunderstanding straightened out.

She wasn't going to be able to do that if she allowed them to remove her personal locator, she realized in dismay.  That would be an act of treason in itself and she didn't think she would get the chance to explain or that they would accept her explanation anyway. 

"You cannot stay here if you will not allow it to be removed.  It is doubtful that they would be able to track you here under the current circumstances--or will even attempt it--but we must assume that they will eventually reestablish supply lines and communications. At that point you would be a danger to everyone with you and we cannot know how much time we might have."

She would never be able to go home again, Danika thought, feeling a knot of misery form in her throat.  That was pretty much all she'd thought about since she'd left--going home again when they were done with her.  That was what had helped her through training.  That thought was what had kept her firmly fixed on surviving.

She wanted to go home! 

But she'd already made her choice, she realized.  She'd deserted.  The chances weren't good, at all, that she would be able to prove she had good reason to flee.  For all she knew everybody that had been dropped on the planet were in the same shape, or worse, than her own battalion had been.  That wasn't going to be a good enough excuse even so.  In fact, the situation was so bad, as far as she could see, that there were probably people deserting right and left in an effort to survive and the military would take action if they lost the war because of desertions.

Her family would be disgraced because she was.

Even if they would allow her to come home, it would endanger them.

Seth abruptly settled a hand heavily enough on her shoulder that it made her jump and whip a quick look at his face.  He wasn't looking at her, however.  He was staring challengingly at Reuel.  "We are a team.  We stay together.  We will leave."

As much as it warmed her to know Seth was willing to remain loyal even if it meant all of them would likely die, she didn't want that on her conscience.  "Go where?"

He looked down at her.  "We will find a place."

It was almost tempting.  For a few moments Danika allowed her imagination to make her hopeful, but they certainly couldn't go back--not now--none of them.  Seth, Dane, and Niles had helped her escape, had run with her.  That made them deserters, too--If it was established that they weren't machines but rather beings who'd made the choice to desert. 

She shook her head.  "No.  He's right.  I'm sorry for getting you guys into this, but there's no going back now."  She managed to dredge up a ghost of a smile.  "In for penny, in for a pound.  Who's doing  the removals?"

Reuel escorted them to an area that had obviously been set aside for that purpose since it was equipped as a battlefield hospital.  It didn't make her feel any better.  The cyborgs were all soldiers.  There'd been no non-human medics and although everyone, including her, had been trained in battlefield  first-aid, they knew only the rudiments of it.  She doubted the cyborgs even had the 'programming' she'd had since they had nanos to repair their damage.

Fortunately, the enemy, the Andorians, were humanoid beings and the equipment had been designed for use on beings much like her. 

Unfortunately, the Andorians weren't human even if they were similar, and none of them knew if their medicines were safe for humans. 

They didn't deaden the area before removing the locator chip.  Danika didn't think she would have passed out if she hadn't been so weak already, but she wasn't actually sorry that she 'missed' the procedure. 

When she came around from her swoon it was to the sounds of a battle being waged practically on top of her.

"Cease!" Reuel roared furiously.

The voice, she recognized.  Darkness was still too prevalent for her to really make out what was going on or who was involved.  All she could see when she forced her eyelids up was a blur of motion, but that was enough to ascertain that there was a brawl in progress even if she couldn't see well enough to tell who was involved.

"She is not dead!  Yet!  You will crush her, you lunatics, if you persist in fighting virtually on top of her!"

What lunatics?

When the darkness finally receded sufficiently for Danika to see what was going on, Seth, Dane, and Niles were being restrained by six other cyborgs and all of them looked as if they'd been through a meat grinder. 

Actually, Reuel was looking a bit worse for wear himself.

"What happened?" Danika asked weakly, trying to push herself upright.

"You!" Reuel growled.  "Stay put or you will swoon again."  He glared at her squad.  "Take them to the brig!"

"Why?" Danika demanded angrily.

"Disciplinary action," Reuel responded.  "And do not question my commands again or you will join them!  I am your commanding officer--that goes for all of you!  We are still soldiers and you will be expected to behave like soldiers!  Not like the ... rabble that we left behind!"

"Yes, Sir!" Danika responded instantly to the authority in his voice.  Self-appointed leader or not, there was no doubt in her mind that Reuel was their acting leader.  "I beg pardon, Sir."

Reuel shook his head.  "Rest.  When you feel like you can get up without fainting, go to the mess hall and get something to eat."

The suggestion made a wave of nausea roll over Danika, but she knew it was from emptiness and, in any case, she didn't feel up to arguing.

Besides which Reuel had borne home the situation with absolute clarity.

Insane or not, despite his paranoia, Brown hadn't gotten that part wrong.  Reuel, clearly, had been considering deserting for a while or he wouldn't have kept the location of the enemy base secret.  And it was just as clear that he'd convinced, or the other cyborgs had convinced themselves, that Reuel was their leader. 

She didn't actually think Reuel had done so with any sort of premeditation.  He'd responded to the situation when a clear headed leader was needed at the battle of Slaughter Ridge.  She thought he'd become the leader of the cyborgs in that very moment and no one had actually questioned his right to lead or his ability to lead.

She didn't if it came to that.  She couldn't say that it hadn't annoyed, and unnerved, her when she'd lost command of her own squad to Seth--because she knew she had almost from the moment he'd changed.  But she didn't consider herself capable of leading the cyborgs in revolt even if they wanted a human leader. 

She still considered ignoring the order to head for the mess hall, but she was weaker after the procedure to remove her locater chip than before.  She was so wobbly, she thought for a little bit that she wouldn't be able to make it even that far.  It was sheer determination not to let the cyborgs know just how weak she was that kept her on her feet until she could reach the dining hall.

She couldn't eat much, regardless.  Her stomach had shriveled like the rest of her.  She thought, in fact, that she might throw up for several moments after the cyborg serving kitchen duty piled a plate high with unrecognizable food chunks.  It smelled appetizing enough, though, and she didn't ask what it was because she didn't want to know.

"It is the beast we found here when we returned to take possession of the base."

Surprised but relieved, Danika sent the cyborg a weak smile of gratitude.  "That's a relief anyway.  I mean ...."

"We are not very good hunters, but we are very good killers.  It was a very big beast.  We will not lack for food for a while even if there is not much variety."

Danika relaxed, even more grateful that he didn't harp on her being human, and what the humans had done, than she was that he'd soothed her fear about the food. 

But maybe he didn't know?

One look in his eyes was enough to assure her that he did.  They probably all knew.

"I do not hate humans."

Danika's smile flat-lined.  "Well, that's good to know."

He looked a little disconcerted.  "I do not have a woman, but I have been thinking that I would like to have one."

That sent Danika reeling, almost literally.  She couldn't think of anything to say for several moments.  "Uh ... well ... uh ...  If I see one, I'll be sure to pass along your interest in finding one."

He frowned, not as if disconcerted or confused this time, but angrily as if she'd insulted him. "We have needs just as the human males do."

Danika held up her hand.  "Too much information!  Hey!  Not doubting it, but I think you need to talk to Reuel about that."

This time his frown was one of confusion.  "I do not see that that will help.  He is a male."

"But he's your commanding officer."

"But he is male.  I do not have desire for a male.  There are plenty of those here.  I have desire for a female."

"Uh.  I think I'll just go sit down ...." Before I fall on my face!  "And eat this while it's hot."

To her dismay, he followed her to her table and sat down across from her, studying her curiously.  "Females also have need."

It was all Danika could do not to choke on the chunk of meat she speared and stuck in her mouth.  She cleared her throat when she managed to swallow it.  "How do you figure that?" she asked in a rasping voice. 

"I have programming as a pleasure droid.  They would not have done that if it was not for the fact that females also have need."

It was hard to argue with that kind of logic!  "Ah, well, you know it was men that ... uh ... probably mostly men that designed ....  Well, you know what I mean."

He frowned.  "I do not understand.  The logic is faulty?"

Danika grunted.  "Something like that.  Human men don't understand women."

His eyes widened, then he frowned again.  Danika managed to choke down several more bites of food, but it was a running battle with her stomach's determination to reject every bite she managed to swallow.

It wasn't that the cyborg wasn't an ... enormous, tank sized, beautiful example of manhood!  She hadn't seen one, yet, that wasn't male beauty personified!  But even if she'd felt desperate need, there were probably upwards of a thousand of them in the rebel base!  She sure as hell didn't want to encourage any of them to perform for her when there was even a tiny chance they might all want a go at her!

Ok, so the truth was that if Seth had made a move on her when they'd been in the facilities together she probably wouldn't have objected, but that was because he'd turned her brains to mush. 

"Women do not have need?" he asked doubtfully.

Danika managed a smile.  She didn't want to lie to him.  He was confused enough!  Poor thing!  "I didn't catch your name?"

He frowned.  "I did not throw it.  I do not know how to throw it," he added, looking very much as if he was searching his databanks.

"Figure of speech," Danika muttered.  "I was asking what your name is."

He looked so pleased she felt bad.

"I mean, considering the conversation, I think that would be appropriate."

He looked confused again.

"I'm Danika.  Cpl. Danika Hart--well, was.  I don't suppose I'm a corporal anymore."

He blinked at her several times.  "I am Basil CS85119.  I think that you are a beautiful, desirable woman and I would like to sex you."

Danika almost did strangle that time.  When she managed to stop coughing, she pushed her plate aside. 

He studied it hungrily.  "You are not going to eat that?"

"Knock yourself out."

He sent her a strange look.  "I do not think that I want to do that even if I could."

Danika bit her lip.  Geeze!  They were so literal minded!  "I mean you can have it if you want it.  I haven't eaten in a long time.  I just can't eat much."

And the conversation was really spoiling what little appetite she had!

It was at that point that she recalled that Reuel had thrown her entire squad into the brig.  She didn't have anybody to watch her back and the scary-big cyborg wanted to hump!

To her relief, the cyborg--Basil--took the plate and finished off her food. 

It didn't last long--the relief or the food.  "You will consider allowing me to sex you?"

"Uh ... well,  I'll think about it.   Right now I think I need to find my squad."

"They are in the brig for disorderly conduct."

Maybe she should consider doing something disorderly so she could be locked up with them, she wondered uneasily?  It seemed preferable to rattling around outside the brig with so many cyborgs--especially if they were all horny like this one!  

"I am not ... handsome?   You do not desire me?"

Danika gaped at him.  He was handsome.  How could he have so little sense of self that he didn't know that?   He was also damned persistent!  "I didn't say that.  I said I'd think about it!" 

"How long will you require to think about it?"

As long as it took to get somewhere that was safe!

"Hey!  You seem like a nice guy.  But I already have three guys, you know?"  She'd hoped that would settle the matter even if it wasn't exactly the truth.

He looked angry again.  "You allow them to sex you?  I have no squad leader now.  I could join your squad."

Danika rolled her eyes.  "I think the word you're looking for is fuck," she said tightly.  "And I'm not in the fucking mood, ok?"

She'd more than half expected him to get angrier.  Instead, he seemed to consider for several moments.  "When do you think you might be in the fucking mood?"

"I'll let you know!" she snapped, jolting to her feet. 

It was almost too much for her weakened state.  Darkness swarmed for several moments and she thought she was going to pass out again.  Evidently, she wasn't good at hiding it either.  Basil scooped her up before she could collapse.  Her head spun as he turned almost in the same motion.  "What are you doing?" she demanded weakly.

"Taking you to sickbay."

Relieved, hopeful that she'd finally settled the matter and wouldn't have to fight him off when he got her back to sickbay, she relaxed against him.

Really, he was damned attractive.  Despite the very bizarre conversation, she couldn't help but find him physically appealing--what was not to like? 

It was deeply disturbing that they--he--had no social skills--at all!

It was also sad. 

Poor thing!  She'd thought the other soldiers--the human ones--were heavy-handed at seduction!

At least poor Basil had an excuse for it.

It made her feel bad for him--for all of them.  How well equipped were they to survive in the 'real' world when they had nothing to fall back on but whatever programming the damned company had seen fit to give them?  With the data in their databanks?

As he'd pointed out, they were very good at killing because that was all they'd been designed for.

* * * *

Danika was only semi-conscious when Basil deposited her on the examination table once more.  She couldn't decide if she was fatigued to that point or if it was weakness from a combination of weeks of almost no food and the admittedly minor surgery, but she was more tempted to go with it and seek oblivion than alarmed about it.

Particularly since it occurred to her that Basil was bound to get bored and leave if she was completely unresponsive to his attempts to 'seduce' her.

That thought was enough to induce her to feign sleep/unconsciousness, but she played possum long enough waiting for Basil to give up and go away that she actually did fall asleep.

Seth, Dane, and Niles all looked so thoroughly pissed off when she finally arrived at the brig to try to talk to them that she was more than a little tempted to simply turn around and leave again.  She'd had to sneak out of sickbay to evade Basil, though, and she didn't like that even more.

Thankfully, much of their anger seemed to dissipate when they saw her.  All three moved to the bars.  "You are not hurt?" Seth demanded after examining her with his gaze.

Danika considered it.  "Not really, no.  It hurt like hell at the time and it still burns, but I'll get over it.  Did they take your locators out, too?"

"Earlier, when we first came," Dane volunteered.  "I have to tell you I liked it much better when I was only alerted of damage and did not feel it. Mind you, there are some things that I find far superior about the senses as opposed to the sensors, but pain is not one of them."

Danika could relate.  She wasn't crazy about pain herself.  They seemed to have recovered from it, however.  She couldn't see that any of them were moving stiffly--even from the signs of battle.  "What happened then?"

The three of them exchanged a speaking look.

"That 'borg they had set to act as medic had not awakened!" Seth growled.  "I did not know it at the time or I would not have allowed the bastard to carve on you as if you could feel nothing at all!"

"Then you became unconscious and I thought--we thought--that he had killed you," Niles added.

"We retaliated for the attack upon you and Reuel came with others and we fought," Dane finished.  "Now we are ordered to stay in the brig for two days for disorderly conduct."

Danika stared at them, torn between warmth and dismay that they'd ended up in the brig for trying to protect her.  Well, according to Niles, retaliating for what they saw as injury to her.

And then there was the little matter that it was going to be damned hard for them to watch her back from a jail cell.

She decided it probably wasn't a good idea to tell them about the incident with Basil, but she was damned if she could figure out how she was going to evade Basil's absolute determination to romance her out of her pants for two days!

"Well!  I think I should be in there, too.  I mean, we're a team.  We should be together, right?"

They all frowned, Niles and Dane thoughtfully, Seth suspiciously. 

"You did not take part in the fight," Seth said pointedly.  "Why would they throw you in the brig?"

"Yes, but it was really my fault, you know."

"How do you figure that?  That is not at all logical."

Danika waved a hand airily.  "We're a team, remember?"  She turned to the guards.  "I want to be locked up with my squad."

The guards had been studying her with frowning intensity, making it clear that they had been following the conversation.  They exchanged a look.  "We were not ordered to lock you in the brig," one of them volunteered.

"I know, but you could," Danika said cajolingly.

"We cannot.  We were not ordered to do so."

"It is not at all comfortable," Dane pointed out.  "You will be more comfortable in the barracks."

Like hell!  She didn't think she was going to be able to sleep a wink surrounded by horny cyborgs--assuming, of course, that they were all in the same state as Basil!  And she didn't see any reason why they wouldn't be.  They were fully aware, now.  The bastards back at base camp could hardly get their minds off of their dicks for five minutes at the time.  The cyborgs might not have been 'awake' long, but their hormones seemed to be in full production now!  She didn't think it was going to take any of them long to figure out what their urges were and what they needed to do to appease them!

Of course that also meant that her own squad members were going to be in the grips of the 'fever' before long, if they weren't already, but she hadn't noticed that they were yet and, at any rate, they still seemed to be ruled by the team bond.  She thought she could handle them.

"I'm a soldier.  I don't expect to be comfortable and I think I deserve to be in the brig if you guys are.  I'll go talk to Reuel," she added decisively.

* * * *

"What do you make of that?" Seth asked thoughtfully when Danika had left.

"I think she does not want to be alone," Niles responded.

Dane snorted.  "There are nine hundred cyborgs here.  How could she be alone?"

Seth and Niles exchanged a look.  "Alone with them," Niles elaborated.  "She has no one to watch her back because we are here."

Dane frowned, assimilating that.  "She thinks they are enemies?" he guessed after a few minutes.

Seth was still sorting possibilities, but he rejected that.  "Why would she think that?"

"Because they are cyborgs?"

"That is not a reason!" Seth snapped.             

"Why is that not a reason?" Dane demanded indignantly.  "She is human.  Everyone else is cyborg!  Is that not enough to make her nervous?"

"That is it!  She is nervous!  I could not entirely decide what it was.   It did not seem like fear and yet I noticed there was uneasiness.  I just could not entirely decide what emotion it was."

"Exactly!" Dane said triumphantly.  "And that is because she does not have us to watch her back and she is surrounded by cyborgs!"

"She has always been surrounded by cyborgs!" Seth growled.  "We are cyborgs!"

"Yes, but we are her cyborgs.  We are her team.  That is different and that is why she wants to be locked up with us.  Because we are a team and we are always together.  Is that not what she said?"

"That is what she said, but it is not what she meant," Niles retorted.

"How do you know that is not what she meant?" Dane demanded indignantly.  "It is what she said.  Why would she say one thing when she meant something else?"

Seth and Niles exchanged a look.

Dane's expression hardened with anger.  "I will punch you in the face, both of you, if you do not stop looking like that!  There is nothing wrong with my understanding!"

"I will knock your teeth down your throat if you try to punch me in the face!" Seth snarled.

"And I also!" Niles snapped.

"Well stop looking at me like that!"

"We did not look at you at all!"

"Exactly!  You looked at one another as if to say that I am stupid!"

Niles frowned, thinking.  "Do you think that she has noticed that all of the cyborgs are horny?"

Seth sent him a sarcastic look.  "You mean only because their dicks rise and point at her when she passes?"

"Your dick does that, too?" Dane asked with interest.  "I had thought it was only mine.  What do you suppose it means?"

"Why the fuck would you think it was only yours?" Seth growled angrily.  "We have awakened also!"

Dane gaped at him a moment before indignation made his dark brows come together over the bridge of his nose.  "Because I have not looked at your dicks?" he said sarcastically.  "I do not know why you would notice anyone else's dick!"

Seth punched him in the face.  "I do not know what you are implying by that, but I will beat the fuck out of you if you imply it again!"

Dane reeled from the blow but managed to remain on his feet.  Drawing his arm back, he punched Seth in the belly.

"Cease!" one of the guards bellowed.  "Or we will put you in separate cells!"

Seth had already drawn back to retaliate, but at that, he lowered his arm.  "We were not fighting."

The guard glared at him.  "Stop ... roughhousing then or I will beat the fuck out of all of you and then put you in separate cells."

"You could not beat the fuck out of me, let alone all of us!" Niles retorted.

"Then I will summon another squad and we will all beat the fuck out of all of you!"

Seth, Dane, and Niles all glared at him, struggling to think of a comeback and finally decided to ignore him. 

"Niles might be right," Seth said after a moment, "but I think it is only that we are a team and she does not feel safe without us there to watch her back."

Chapter Nine

It took Danika over an hour to locate Reuel.  It might not have taken that long if she'd felt comfortable about stopping one of the cyborgs and asking directions, but she didn't, and the complex was big enough it might not have helped even if she had.  She finally located him in the base hanger--which was filled, mostly, with debris and cyborgs moving around like ants in a stirred anthill. 

The purposeful activity distracted her for some time.  She was fairly certain that a good bit of the debris was from the plane in front of Slaughter Ridge where their drop-ships had been shot down.   She'd wondered at the time why they were so carefully gathering and sorting the debris from the downed ships--and what had become of it when it vanished afterwards.