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.
“Asifthere’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’min 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, shealsocouldn’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.
Thatwas 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.
