* * * *
The first fingers of dawn were just lighting the sky when Danika came awake with a jolt, aroused to full awareness by a sound that didn't 'belong'. It still took her a few moments to figure out what the sound was. By the time she had, the men were already on their feet and had rushed outside.
Engines! Hard on that realization, she heard engines roar to life far closer.
The lookouts had spotted enemy crafts!
The Andorians coming to claim the prize?
Or the Confederation ships arriving at last?
She froze for several moments after she'd gained her feet, torn between a fierce desire to try to make it back to base before the ships took off and the certainty that it had been too late by the time she'd woke. Finally, she rushed outside to stare up at the sky as everyone else was doing. In the near distance, she saw the ships shoot skyward. Any doubts that the first engines she'd heard weren't a real threat vanished. As swiftly as their captured ships ascended, missiles and lasers began lighting the sky above them like fireworks--on steroids.
For all that, they couldn't see much of what was happening. The canopy of the trees didn’t just prevent them from being spotted. It prevented them from seeing much of the sky at all. Strain though Danika might, she couldn't actually see any of the crafts that she could hear in the aerial battle. She didn't hear or see much in the way of return fire, though--no surprise since they'd had very little ammunition for the ships' cannons either. But she also didn't hear any crashes or explosions loud enough to indicate a hit.
Her hopes rose that their ships were going to break through the atmosphere where their odds of escape would, hopefully, improve tremendously given the agility of the small crafts and the improvements they'd made to them.
"They didn't even wait to see if the damned camo worked! The enemy might have passed over without ever spotting them!"
"They were under orders not to," Basil replied. "If they were found here it would endanger those who could not leave. The order was to make certain they were seen and to lead the Confederation away--if possible. They cannot know how many are aboard the ships. This way, if they succeed in escaping, the Confederation may assume that all who are unaccounted for have fled."
And they might not! The might decide it was worth searching the area!
The village they'd discovered suddenly seemed way too close to ground zero. Fear and frustration assailed her. They’d just begun to make the place livable! She hated like hell to give it up!
And she wasn’tgoingto, she decided angrily, not unless theyhadto!
* * * *
Danika hadn't actually expected to be able to establish a comfortable routine. She'd thought the village held out the best promise for survival, but she was happy to discover that she'd underestimated the situation by a far piece. Little by little, they managed to utilize local resources to make their abode reasonably comfortable--far more comfortable, in fact, than anything any of them had had since they'd joined the service.
It had been touch and go for weeks. Even though she'd known a good bit about hunting, and had experience, she was in a completely different environment and hunting animals that were only vaguely similar to those she'd hunted before. As they'd become more proficient with the crude weapons they had at their disposal--or she had--however, her luck had improved accordingly. She’d taught the men how to fashion the snares and capture pits she and her father had used and that cut down on the time spent stalking prey, particularly since they were fortunate enough to capture enough animals alive to start a small herd.
The water was damned cold for bathing, but it was a close source for good, fresh drinking water and the temperature worked really well for preserving what they did catch and kill for days, which was as long as it lasted anyway--a few days.
Less than a week after the 'decoys' left them in sole possession of the area, if not the planet, they ran into another group. By the time a month had passed, they'd established a regular village of their own--well, they hadn't actuallybuilta village, but theyoccupiedit along with most of the others who'd drawn the 'short straw' and ended up staying on the planet.
Danika didn't actually consider that they'd gotten the short end of the stick after a few weeks, though. She didn't know how any of the others were faring--those who'd managed to leave the planet and hopefully the solar system--buttheyweren't doing badly at all.
Not everyone shared her view. She discovered that those who'd stayed included all of the squads that had a female squad leader and several of the women, naturally enough, just couldn't be pleased. Most of them seemed to just be glad they weren't living on the verge of disaster, anymore, and had some comforts.
They watched in vain, for a while, for the return of the Confederation forces and/or the return of the cyborgs, but they'd been there almost half a year before they saw any sign at all of outworlders. At that, they only saw ships far into the distance, not close enough to be a threat or close enough to identify, for that matter, beyond the fact that they were deep space freighters. The ships could have belonged to either the Andorians or the Confederation.
They didn't figure, even though it was obvious someone had won the war for possession and exploitation of the planet's resources, that they needed to worry about the threat of intruders for a while, anyway.
The knowledge even gave them a morale boost, as a matter of fact, because they knew there would be ships to leave the planet if that became desirable or necessary. All they had to do was launch an assault and take one.
Danika discovered she was happy enough to consider the future when and if the time came. It took a while for the others to accept Basil as 'one of the family' but she felt like she had a family and, aside from the fighting from time to time, it wasn't bad living with them at all. In fact, it was pretty damned fantastic.
She loved her guys. They were a dream team--a little pushy about sex now and then, but not too difficult to handle and there wasnothingthey weren't fantastic at.
She thought if Reuel ever did find that world he was hoping for, that she might not be all that keen to give up what they had and start over.
On the other hand, she'd come to realize that home was wherevertheywere, her guys. If Reuel found a place that the cyborgs could truly call home, without the constant threat of a war with the Confederation hanging over them, that was the only thing that could possibly make life any better.
Epilogue
Danika had always known that fate was a capricious bitch. The moment it seemed everything was going good, fate stepped in to slap one down. And yet, despite her certainty that that was usually the case, she’d fallen so comfortably into the routine of life on their ‘homestead’ that she’d managed to shove her worry over who shared the planet with them far into the back of her mind long since when the first threat appeared on her horizon.
