Danika blinked at them and then stared at the other cyborgs. “Seriously?” she said, trying to decide how she felt about it.
The leader of the group Seth had brought back stepped forward and bowed slightly. “Greetings! I am Captain Jared. I have been sent by General Reuel to bring you all home. We do not have much time. We are bound to have company if we linger here long. We entered on the dark side of this world, and came in low, but we cannot expect that we were not detected. They are bound to send someone to investigate a landing here.”
Danika gaped at the man in dismay. “Just like that?”
Captain Jared frowned and turned to look at Seth questioningly.
“We are rescued,” Dane said before Seth could say anything. “They have come to take us to the Cyborg Nation.”
“Well! We don’t know a damned thing about this new world! What about everything we’ve done here?” Sheila said forcefully, drowning out the questions and complaints of the other women in the group.
The men, all of them, looked baffled, vaguely angry, and dismayed. “We have built a beautiful city!” Captain Jared exclaimed. “It is a beautiful world, there is land for everyone, and it belongs only to us—the Cyborg Nation.” A thought apparently occurred to him. He looked a little uncomfortable. “Well there are primitives, but we have taken all that we need for ourselves and they do not give us much trouble.”
Danika frowned. “To build?” Before the man could respond, she continued. “We have a place here. We just got comfortable, damn it!”
“We do not want to go?” Niles said doubtfully.
Danika gaped at him. Contrarily, the moment he suggested that they stay where they were she began to consider the possibility that the new world would have far more to offer than the primitive life they now had.
She had to think about the baby!
Supposing she was pregnant!
She bit her lip and glanced around at the other women, realizing abruptly that they’d just gotten used to the conditions they’d had to deal with. They certainly weren’t in an ideal situation.
And she might be pregnant! Did she want to raise children here?
She didn’t. They might never know the difference, butshedid.
Life might still be uncertain on this new world, but they would be with an entire nation of cyborgs. It would be safer—a much safer place to rear a family than what they had here.
She shook her head. “No. We do want to go. It’s just … Never mind! I would’ve liked to have more time to think about it and consider everything, but I’m not staying here if Reuel has found a better place for us!”
“What about our personal belongings?” Jane demanded, dismay threading her voice.
Captain Jared looked disconcerted as if it hadn’t occurred to him that they might have belongings they’d want to take with them!
“Two men from each group will return to collect personal belongings and rendezvous with the ship in …,” Seth said, then paused, calculating, “twenty minutes. Is that acceptable?”
The captain looked displeased, but he finally nodded.
Danika worried all the way to the ship that she’d made the wrong decision, but as soon as she boarded she knew she’d made the right one. She’d forgotten how absolutelydivinemodern civilization was!
While they were waiting for the men to return, she collected a new uniform from supplies and headed for the facilities to take a bath. Half of the women were already there ahead of her and she settled to wait her turn with a mixture of impatience and amusement.
“Don’t tell me,” she said to Sheila as she emerged, “the bathing facilities were the deciding factor.”
Sheila hesitated and finally shrugged. “I admit that was part of it. The truth is … I think I might be pregnant and I didn’t want to have my baby there.”
Shock rolled over Danika. “Have you told your guys yet?” she asked finally.
Sheila reddened. “Since I don’t know which one … uh … no.”
Dismay flickered through Danika. She hadn’t considered that! She didn’t have a clue herself who might have fathered hers! What the hell was she going to do about that?
Then it hit her—real, modern facilities!
“If they have a med-bay … and I don’t see why they wouldn’t … we could get a DNA test done,” she muttered thoughtfully. She didn’t realize what she’d admitted until she focused on Sheila again.
