The Lawgivers: Gabriel (39 page)

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I beg pardon. I thought that I had
responded to your question.”

“I don’t think you thought anything of
the kind. You evaded the question.”

He frowned. “I am …
confused.”

He was lying, Danika realized, feeling
an abrupt shift of her consciousness from Seth to the bedraggled
encampment surrounding the two of them. He’d said that there were
thirty six humans that had survived the drop and made it to the
encampment. That was roughly a quarter of the squad leaders—all
human like herself—who’d made it out of the nearly 1200 man unit
that had been dropped at these coordinates. Probably three quarters
of the cyborgs that were part of their unit had made it.

How many of those, she wondered, had
experienced the same sort of bizarre malfunction that she saw in
Seth? All of them? Half?

Because, instead of convincing herself
that it was all in her mind, she’d become more and more certain
that it wasn’t in her mind at all. Seth had … changed.

She would’ve liked to have convinced
herself that Seth was the only one—because she hadn’t noticed
anything strange about either Dane or Niles—but she abruptly
recalled that it had been a cyborg who’d taken charge and issued
orders—to the cyborgs—when they’d been boxed in at the
ridge.

How much danger did these … rogues
represent?

It was a chilling thought and one that
had plagued Danika since she’d discovered that 75% to 80% of the
army the government had put together was cyborg. Humans were only
there as ‘handlers’—truthfully only there to prevent the mass
hysteria that probably would’ve resulted in the discovery by the
civilian population that the government had put together a massive
army of autonomous steel monsters—which was probably also the
reason the government had insisted that they look human.

She cleared her throat nervously. “Run
a systems check and see if you can detect any … uh … programming or
mechanical anomalies.”

“What irregularities should I search
for?”

Danika forced a tight smile. “Anything.
We’ve lost enough men already. We need to be sure everyone is in
peak operating condition for the next attack.”

They found Lieutenant Brown in one of
the habitats. When Seth had left, she asked for permission to
enter. After a fairly prolonged wait, when she was just about to
ask again, permission was granted and she went inside. Brown looked
pale, shaken, and distracted, but Danika couldn’t detect any
patches on his hab-suit to indicate that he’d been wounded. She was
no medic, but he looked like he had a bad case of shellshock. She
saluted. “Sir! I’ve been informed by one of my squad members that
there aren’t enough habs to house all of the men. I wanted to put
in a request for a hab for my own squad and ask when we might
expect more supplies. We used most of our munitions last night in
the fire fight and we only have enough rations in our packs for a
few days.”

He stared at her blankly for several
moments and then made a sound that might have been a laugh. When
she gaped at him he seemed to pull himself together. He gestured
wide with his hands. “What you see here, corporal, is what we
have.”

Danika’s mind immediately conjured an
image of the piles of charred debris outside the hab. An icy fist
seemed to close around her heart. “Sir, we haven’t recovered
much—so far.”

“Well you’d better look harder!” he
said angrily. “Because this is our supply drop. Command informed me
that they’d disbursed supplies on hand. We’ll have to make do until
another supply ship arrives unless we can get another unit to share
and the closest is five hundred miles to the south of us. And we’ve
been ordered to maintain radio silence. And we don’t have a working
vehicle.”

Under the circumstances, Danika
dismissed the idea she’d had of informing her superior of her
suspicions regarding the cyborgs. That had never been a good idea,
she reflected, since she was a female and her vague intuition
would’ve been discounted as hysteria or, at the very least,
overactive imagination. Considering their situation and the
condition of their highest ranking officer it seemed like the worst
idea she’d ever had.

In any case, the biggest problem at the
moment was the scarcity of supplies. If Brown knew what he was
talking about, and he seemed to, they could be looking at a long,
long stretch before a supply ship arrived. Food didn’t loom as her
biggest worry. Shelter was a high priority. The suits could extract
energy from the sun, but this world wasn’t a place where one could
count on a lot of solar radiation. One of the problems was its
distance from its sun and the other was the storms.

More importantly even that that, to her
mind, was the dangerously low munitions.

That thought instantly conjured an
image of the men lying at the base of the ridge. Revulsion washed
over her in a wave, but they were going to be casualties of war
themselves if they didn’t have anything to throw at the enemy when
they attacked again.

And, newbie or not, she knew they’d be
expected to act, not to simply sit tight and hope the enemy didn’t
come to them. They’d been dropped to secure the planet as a forward
base of operations. They were going to have to figure out a way to
do that with what they had—or die trying.

“Sir! Permission to take a detail to
the ridge and collect whatever supplies we can find and bury the
dead?”

He stared at her as if she’d grown two
heads. “And leave the base vulnerable to another attack? We don’t
have the manpower, soldier!”

“Begging pardon, Sir! But we’re going
to be screwed if we don’t find supplies somewhere!”

“What makes you think they haven’t
already been picked clean?”

“I don’t know that they haven’t. But we
also don’t know that they have. We have to account for the dead and
missing anyway, if possible. You could spare my squad, at least.
There are only four of us. And it’s likely that those who got lost
in the storm last night will make it into camp. Or at least
possible,” she added when he looked skeptical.

She thought he would dismiss her
suggestion out of hand but after a moment, he seemed to steady
himself. “That suggestion has some merit,” he murmured, turning it
over. “Permission granted. Take your men and hump it over to
Slaughter Ridge, collect whatever munitions and supplies you can,
and get back here by dark.”

Danika frowned. That seemed a tall
order even for three cyborgs. She didn’t see any possibility of
giving the dead a decent burial and collecting supplies and hauling
them all back in the space of a day. “The burials?”

“We can’t spare the men for a burial
detail right now. They’re on ice. They’ll keep. And if the snow
doesn’t bury them, we will when we can. Just scan their
IDs.”

It sounded callous, but she knew he was
right—on all counts. It actually heartened her that he seemed more
collected. If they were going to survive at all they needed a
leader that had his head on straight—and he wasn’t just the highest
ranking officer, he was the only officer at the moment.

When she left his hab, she saw that her
squad was waiting nearby. She met Seth’s gaze briefly and then
studied the faces of the other two as she approached them. Relieved
when she saw that neither Dane nor Niles seemed to be affected by
whatever had brought about the change in Seth, she felt some of her
uneasiness evaporate. “We’re to return to the ridge to see what we
can collect in the way of supplies and munitions. We’re going to
have to hump it, though. The lieutenant said to be back by
dark.”

Seth’s gaze flickered over her. “Your
wound will slow you. It would be better if we went and you stayed
in the camp.”

Their wounds, or damage, was going to
slow them, too, but she doubted even though they’d sustained more
damage than she had that they would be as handicapped as she was.
She was running on adrenaline and she knew it, but not only did she
realize she couldn’t afford to lay around to recover, there was no
place to lay around and no actual medics. “I feel like shit, but I
can make it. I’ll feel a hell of a lot better when I have some
ammo—and enough rations to carry me through a couple of
weeks.”

Thankfully, he merely nodded and
followed her when she shrugged her weapon from her shoulder and
started out of camp. The throbbing from her wound began to
intensify almost immediately and she paused after a little bit and
checked her med-kit, counting the painkillers. She had three doses.
She decided to take half a dose to dull the pain. If she took a
full dosage, she wasn’t going to be very alert. Besides, she might
need the painkiller worse later on. “I don’t suppose you guys were
issued painkillers?” she asked, only half joking because she was
hopeful they might have something.

“No,” Seth responded.

“Want one of mine?”

Seth sent her a sharp look. “Thank you.
I do not need it.”

She didn’t believe him. He looked like
he was in pain, but she didn’t push it. Shrugging, she put the kit
up. “More for me.”

“Yes.”

Thank you for pointing that out, she
thought irritably. She didn’t think it was a good thing that the
cyborgs knew the humans among them were far weaker than they
were.

They’d only been trudging through knee
deep snow for an hour when they found their first corpse. Danika
discovered it by stubbing her toe on it and falling over it. The
fall set her wound to throbbing hard enough it might have taken her
a while to get up if Seth hadn’t hauled her upright.

She thought she’d tripped on a rock,
but she’d managed to clear enough loose snow away when she’d
sprawled out to identify the object that she’d fallen
over.

“He is dead.”

Danika flicked a glance at Seth, met
his gaze for a moment, and looked away. Until he’d said that, she’d
convinced herself that it was a cyborg. In that state, he certainly
didn’t look human. She swallowed a little sickly and knelt beside
the corpse.

“I will do it,” Niles said.

When Danika glanced toward him, he
lifted his head, looked her directly in the eyes, and she saw there
the same change that she’d seen in Seth. Caught between horror at
the task she’d volunteered and shock that whatever it was affecting
Seth seemed to be spreading, she couldn’t think of a response for
several moments. “It has to be done. I might as well get used to
it,” she finally responded.

“You do not have to grow accustomed
now. I will … search this one for supplies.”

She decided not to argue with him. For
one, she didn’t think she could manage the ‘job’ without puking.
For another, arguing with a machine that could rip her apart as
easily as tearing paper if he took the notion seemed like a really
stupid idea.

Seth gripped her arm and hauled her to
her feet again as if the matter was settled and she sent him an
uneasy look.

Seth hesitated, but he didn’t like the
look in her eyes. “No one here will harm you. We are programmed to
protect our team leader, Danika.”

It was almost an admission that he’d
changed—drastically—and it didn’t comfort her as it had no doubt
been meant to. How much of their programming, she wondered, had
been corrupted by whatever had brought about the change she’d
noticed?

Explore Kaitlyn O’Connor’s darker side
….

***warning! Bondage & forced
seduction

WHEN NIGHT FALLS

K. O’Connor

Chapter One

The planet below them looked
surprisingly beautiful considering that it was a dead world. Dr.
Tessa Bergin studied its surface with a mixture of frustration and
disgust. Strictly speaking, it was not actually dead, but the
civilization they had traveled so far to contact was.

Two years ago, when they had left
Earth, she had been filled with excitement to be a part of the
mission that would contact the advanced civilization their deep
space probes had discovered. From all indications, it was at least
their equal, and very likely even more medically and
technologically advanced. She had expected to learn so much from
them! She had been so thrilled to escape the abject boredom of the
museum she worked in and the endless rounds of restoring and
studying the same stale artifacts that never seemed to actually
lead anywhere.

Finally, she would get the chance to
discover things on her own! Finally, she would not have to do the
drudge work of the more experienced scientists!

Half way out, they had woken from their
fourth deep sleep cycle to the discovery that something had gone
terribly wrong. While they had slept, an entire world of people had
died, taking their civilization with them.

Instead of setting down and negotiating
a working relationship with another race, they would be studying
the remains of the civilization that had vanished, virtually
overnight.

She would be fortunate if they even
allowed her to set foot on the planet! Anthropology was her field,
but there was certainly no urgency to study the civilization
now--dead was dead. She could only dig and speculate and try to
figure out what sort of civilization had been there, if she was
allowed to go. She wouldn’t get the chance to study a working,
vital, social structure that was completely different from their
own.