“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 Feltonknew—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.
