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, itstillhad 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.
