Danika reacted instantly. Rolling over and jackknifing into a sitting position on the bunk, she stared at the newcomer owl-eyed.
Uttering a snarl of rage, Seth stalked across the cell and slammed his fist into the side of the cyborg's head hard enough it hit the wall and bounced back. At that, he barely managed to reach his goal before Niles and Dane.
Shouldering Seth aside, Dane grabbed the cyborg by the hair and dragged him off the bunk. Before he could do more, Niles dropped to his knees and started pounding at the man with his fists.
Danika uttered a shriek of dismay, rolled from the bunk and scrambled under it for cover. "Stop it! Stand down, damn it! Seth! Dane! Niles! What the hell ...?"
Within moments, the guards had surged into the cell with them and a full scale battle was in progress, despite the fact that there was almost no room to maneuver once all of them had crowded into the cell. The cyborgs remedied that situation by slamming each other into the bars of the cell until the 'cage' that had contained them collapsed under far more weight than they were designed to withstand and fell outward.
The shrill alarm that had begun to blare almost the moment the fight broke out brought more cyborgs to join the melee. In a matter of minutes, the combatants had reduced the entire brig to rubble.
"Cease!" a commanding voice roared above the growls, grunts, meaty thuds and crashes of demolition of the walls, furniture, and cells.
Most of the cyborgs instantly stopped and came to attention. Reuel waded through the crowd and captured the attention of the few who continued to wrestle by judicious use of his fists.
"Outside! Now! Report to the main area of the complex and form up, soldiers!"
His face a mask of barely contained rage, Reuel stood to one side and watched as the men began to file out. When they had emptied the brig, or what was left of it, he surveyed the damage with disgust and finally spied Danika trying to crawl out from under the collapsed bunk where she'd taken shelter. Striding toward it, he ripped the bunk from the wall and tossed it aside, staring down at Danika in tightlipped silence for several moments. "You, too, corporal."
"Yes, Sir!" Danika responded, scrambling to her feet and saluting him.
Rolling his eyes, Reuel stalked out with Danika trailing behind him. When Reuel stopped to survey the miscreants, Danika marched past him as unobtrusively as possible and joined her squad on the back row of the men that had assembled.
"I don't think so," Reuel growled. "Since I strongly suspect that your squad is responsible for this ... complete breakdown in discipline. Corporal Hart--front and center! And bring your squad."
Danika felt her face heat but discomfort was the least of it. Fear clutched at her heart as she glanced fleetingly at Seth's stony face and then turned and led the men to the front.
Reuel gave each of them a long look of disgust and then turned and left.
Danika was tempted to use his absence to dress the men down for fighting, but she didn't dare. It was just as well. They heard Reuel summoning the rest of the cyborgs and in a few minutes the entire battalion had assembled and Reuel took up a position out front once more to address them.
"We are the finest soldiers in all of the confederation ... created to be second to none in all things military! While I understand and commiserate with all of you ...knowthe same confusion you all feel since the awakening and realize how difficult it is to deal with these changes that none of us completely understand, I will NOT tolerate a breakdown in discipline! Our survival, our future, depends upon unity! Only an absolute dedication to surviving will give us a chance at a future. If we do not stand together, we will not stand at all!
"Know this! Regardless of our desires, we are enemies of the confederation now. They will dedicate themselves to hunting us down and destroying us because they will see us as a threat totheirsurvival! This much I believe I completely understand. I also understand that soldiering is all that any of us assembled here today totally grasp at this time and that way lies salvation for us as beings in our own right. To disintegrate into an undisciplined rabble will only make us vulnerable to our enemies.
"It seems ... clear to me given the recent debacle in the brig, that awareness of ourselves as beings has brought us to the natural urge to procreate--just as all living things share this desire and need. In time we may reach a point where it will be possible, and safe, for us to pursue this natural course in evolution, but that time is not now. We cannot afford to be distracted from the need to survive, from our duty to our people as a whole, or we will never see that day.
"I do not have the heart to war with our creators. And yet I see no alternative for us if we cannot escape the net they will devise for us once communications and the supply lines are restored. We have gathered together all that is available to us to escape this world and avoid that confrontation--at least in the near term. I will expect every soldier here to keep that in mind, to behave like disciplined soldiers, and achieve that goal! I will expect you to remember that you are, first and foremost, soldiers!"
He didn't dismiss them when he finished and everyone remained stiffly at attention for some minutes, waiting for the dismissal. Finally, one of the soldiers stepped forward and saluted. "Permission to speak?"
Reuel nodded.
"Sir--the ships that we are working on are short-range only. I do not see that they will help us to avoid a war with humans."
Reuel said nothing for several moments. "I have hope that they will be sufficient to take us to Xeno-11, this world's sister." He shrugged. "That is only a short-range goal that could take us to a place where survival is ... more likely, at least from the elements."
"Hope?"
Again Reuel shrugged. "We have much to gain and nothing to lose by the attempt. Even with this base we are not likely to survive long given the conditions on this world. And if we remain here, we will find that we cannot avoid an all out war with the humans for our survival."
Another soldier stepped forward, saluted, and requested permission to speak. "It is my understanding that Xeno-11 is the reason the Andorians and the humans are at war. Will that not take us to a place where war is more inevitable with whoever wins the war?"
Reuel smiled thinly. "I am counting on finding ships there that are designed with long range capability. I do not mind initiating battles for the sake of gaining the means to deliver our people to a better place."
"What about the others that are here? We represent only a handful of those the confederation dropped on this world."
"We must have ships even to attempt an evacuation of our people. That being the case, you are all dismissed! I will expect you to have a means of transport readied for us in short order!"
