The Lawgivers: Gabriel (37 page)

They’d already taken losses in the
hundreds, maybe thousands, and they hadn’t even reached the
planet’s surface yet!

It was almost beyond comprehension—far
easier to think in terms of numbers than soldiers.

Were the other battalions being dropped
around the globe taking similar fire? Or were they the unlucky ones
being dropped right in the lap of a nest of enemy
troops?

“Danika! Are you alright? Were you
hit?”

The sound of her name penetrated
Danika’s shock. She blinked as if coming awake and searched for the
origin, the person who’d spoken, and stared at Seth blankly—Seth
CO1543. He was a cyborg, she thought, struggling to figure out what
it was about him that didn’t seem right. Why was he asking her if
she was alright?

He looked human—all of the latest
cyborgs did—and small wonder when they were constructed of almost
50% biological materials. They looked so human that it would’ve
been hard getting used to the idea that they weren’t except they
still didn’t behave like humans. They didn’t speak like humans. Not
only did they have no accents like most humans did that pegged them
to various regions, but they used none of the abbreviated speech
patterns common to humans, none of the slang or colloquialisms, and
they didn’t make idle chatter. In fact nothing that came out of
their mouths bore more than a passing resemblance to conversation.
They responded when spoken to—when a response was needed. They
issued warnings when they detected anything they needed to warn
humans of, and otherwise they said nothing at all.

The early autonomous robots,
particularly the ones used in warfare, just looked like
machines—some roughly humanoid in that they had a head and torso,
two arms, two legs, etc. and others more like tanks with heads—but
the ‘bare bones’ unclad chassis had design defects. Two much of
their critical mechanics was vulnerable. The enemy could simply aim
for exposed pneumatic tubes or motors and incapacitate them. Thin
armor sheathing came next, but not only did that create a serious
weight issue, but it gave the human troops the creeps. They
wouldn’t have had a problem if the units weren’t autonomous, but
being surrounded by steel monsters that seemed capable of
anything—including acting on their own—was too distracting and
demoralizing for the human troops. It had the same effect on the
enemy, of course, but since the human ground troops were there to
make sure the robots didn’t destroy property that didn’t need to be
destroyed or gun down innocent civilians—or go berserk and destroy
everything and everyone in sight—the government decided they needed
an army that looked more human and could be more easily accepted by
their human counterparts.

Synthetic human-like sheathing came
next—which opened up a whole new market for the manufacturer—who’d
already produced way more robots than they could sell to the
government and were looking at a sharp decline of their profits if
not total disaster. The civilian population suddenly saw a need for
companions, nannies—entertainment. The synthetic sheathing just
wasn’t quite close enough to human flesh and skin. Happily, that
desire for human flesh coincided nicely with the advances in
growing human skin cells—muscles, internal organs—the whole works.
It had actually become far cheaper to use the ‘real’ thing than
synthetics and since the cyborgs couldn’t object to and weren’t
terrified of nanos like the rest of the population was, they could
introduce nanos into the cyborgs to affect repairs.

Not that they would have objected to
making more money off of the government in repairing damaged
equipment, but they’d done such an excellent job of convincing the
government that their cyborgs were virtually indestructible that
the government had demanded a guarantee on the product before they
would sign off on the multi-trillion dollar contact.

It wasn’t just the fact that Seth had
asked her if she was alright, though, she realized
abruptly.

One the things that had always unnerved
her about working with the cyborgs was the eyes. They had cold,
dead, emotionless eyes. They managed to replicate some emotion
through programming that kept them from being quite so stilted in
their interactions. They looked and felt human. As long as they
didn’t talk, or confined themselves to one or two word responses
and she didn’t look them directly in the eyes, she could pretend
her team was just a bunch of recruits just like she was—really big,
brawny recruits—but as human as she was, not titanium monsters that
could squash her like a bug if their programming was faulty in any
way and the notion struck them.

And yet when she’d met Seth’s gaze,
she’d seen everything reflected in them that she was feeling in
those moments herself—fear of pain and death.

But maybe that was it? Nothing but a
reflection of her own fears? Projected onto him?

She wasn’t entirely convinced, but the
realization that she’d been frozen with shock and fear shook her.
She couldn’t afford to let those emotions take the upper hand or
she wasn’t going to get out of this alive!

Considering the bombardment, she didn’t
know if they were even going to make it to the ground, but she
needed to act when and if they did!

She got her second jolt when they were
ordered out and she finally made it to the off ramp—only to
discover that they were still a very long way from the ground, not
on it, as she’d expected. Instantly visions of being mangled like a
squashed spider when she hit the ground leapt into her mind. Before
she could force her way out of the line or demand to be taken
lower, Seth, who was behind her, tightened his grip around her
torso and stepped off the damned plank into thin air—really thin
air!

She screamed all the way down.
Fortunately, the landing was enough of a jolt to knock the panic
out of her when it deprived her of breath. Reason reared its head
as the snow pack around her was peppered with shots from what
seemed every direction. Her conditioning took
over—thankfully.

The landscape was so starkly white with
ice and snow that it almost seemed to glow in the moonlight that
bathed it. As she rolled over and scanned her surroundings in one
swift, sweep, she saw that the virtually flat plane she’d landed on
was littered with black dots of all shapes and sizes—burning debris
from the landers that didn’t make it to the drop in one piece, and
bodies, some moving, some eerily still. A black bowl of sky capped
the nearly featureless landscape.

She couldn’t tell where the enemy
position was!

It didn’t help that she couldn’t see a
damned thing once her team decided to form a wall around her—to
protect her! What were they thinking? They were supposed to be
shooting at the damned enemy!

Fight or die, she told herself! The
enemy had them pinned down. What to do? Retreat?

Not unless ordered.

Thankfully, the thought had no sooner
entered her mind than she heard the command.

Except she was at the front and
supposed to lay down fire for those in the back to drop
back.

Fight or die!

She finally managed to spot a flash
that gave away an enemy position. Once she began returning fire,
she was able to focus on trying to eliminate everyone firing at
her. She didn’t realize how anxious she was for her turn to drop
back until the moment she’d been waiting for came. A new line had
been formed and her team could drop back and take up a position a
little further from the enemy.

Yelling for her team to drop back, she
leapt to her feet—stupid move! The projectile that slammed into her
and smacked her down again drove that home! Blackness swarmed over
her. She was in so much pain it took her a few minutes to figure
out what had happened. By the time she did, Seth had scooped her up
under one arm and was racing across the plane. The jarring raised
her pain level until oblivion claimed her. When she came to, she
felt hands tugging at her suit. Her mind struggled for a moment to
make sense of what was happening and finally produced the
conviction that she was being attended by a medic.

Thank god! She wasn’t going to
die—yet.

Needing assurance, she opened her eyes
with an effort, managed to focus—and then got the shock of her
life. Seth was manhandling her—not a medic-borg!

She didn’t even manage to say no before
he set her on fire with the damned laser! And she was in too much
pain after that to berate him.

She needed to get up and fight. She was
aware enough of her surroundings to realize the fire fight had
intensified, could hear the sounds of battle through the open
channel that provided communications for the force on the ground
and the dull, muted sounds of intense fighting that penetrated her
protective helmet. With a supreme effort of will, she managed to
move her arms and hands—or the uninjured one anyway—in a blind
search for her weapon. She didn’t find it and the fear of
discovering she was unarmed sent a torrent of adrenaline through
her that was powerful enough to enable her to roll onto her stomach
and perform a wider search. “My weapon. Where’s my
weapon?”

“I have it.”

It was Niles who responded—she thought.
“Well give it to me, damn it!”

“You have sustained damage, squad
leader, Danika.”

“Like I don’t fucking know that when my
whole right side is on fire! Give me the damned thing!”

“Time to fall back again,” Seth
responded, scooping her up and launching into another bone shaking
run that made her pass out again.

When Danika regained consciousness
again, she found herself staring up at a sheer, white wall of ice.
She stared at it blankly, trying to figure out where it had come
from when she certainly hadn’t noticed it earlier when she’d
surveyed the plane they’d landed on.

Apparently, no one else had noticed it
either when they’d been given the order to fall back—except the
enemy, because they’d driven them back against a wall of ice they
had no hope of scaling. They weren’t equipped for
climbing.

They were all going to die—right in
this godforsaken spot!

Strategically speaking, they were
fucked!

Danika roused herself to make another
demand for her weapon just as she heard the command—directed at the
cyborgs.

Seth scooped her up and tilted his head
back to gauge the distance.

Not that she didn’t think it was a
damned good idea for him to make some calculations before he
attempted it, but he made one hell of a target! Miraculously,
although projectiles whizzed past them, none made their target …
until the very moment Seth crouched to launch the two of them. As
he sprang up again, shooting them skyward, she heard him grunt and
felt him jerk with an impact.

They weren’t going to make it, she
thought in dismay! It was further, she was sure, than the drop from
the ship had been and she’d been convinced he couldn’t make that
leap and remain operational.

Chapter Two

Seth more or less fell over the top of
the precipice. Barely clearing the edge, he pitched himself forward
in a roll.

Fully expecting to be crushed, Danika
was too stunned to move for several moments after Seth stopped
rolling, waiting in vain for the pain of crushed and mangled body
to reach the nerve centers in her brain, regardless of the fact
that she was sprawled on top of Seth when he finally stopped
rolling.

Realizing after a few moments that she
wasn’t dead or dying, she lifted her head and stared at his face.
He was staring up at the sky above them and she felt a jolt run
through her. “Seth?”

He blinked and shifted his gaze to her
face. For a long moment, their gazes seemed locked and in that
moment Danika saw, or thought she saw, something she should not
have seen in the eyes of a cyborg—pain and relief.

“Damage report,” she said finally,
pushing herself off of him with an effort and looking around for
her other team mates. Niles, she saw, was crouched beside them,
firing toward the enemy line. Dane was nowhere in sight and she
recalled abruptly that his mobility had been impaired when the drop
ship had been damaged. Scrambling toward the edge of precipice, she
looked down. She had a split second to register the disaster below
and discover that Dane was dangling by one arm from the side of the
ice cliff and then a hand curled around one of her ankles and she
felt herself dragged backwards.

Twisting her head, she saw it was Seth
who had hold of her ankle.

He was glaring at her. “You will get
your head shot off!”

Stunned at the display of anger, Danika
blinked several times, gaping at him. She was far more preoccupied
with the scene her mind had captured, however. It looked like fully
half of their force was trapped below—maimed, wounded, or already
dead, and the enemy was advancing and systematically executing
anybody who hadn’t managed to escape the trap. She barely noticed
when he released his hold and crawled to the edge of the precipice
to look down as she had.

“Can you climb?”

“The mobility of my left arm is
compromised. I will try.”

“Niles and I will try to cover you,”
Seth responded, turning to summon Niles with a hand
motion.