Synthetic human-like sheathing came next—which opened up a whole new market for the manufacturer—who’d already produced way more robots than they could sell to the government and were looking at a sharp decline of their profits if not total disaster. The civilian population suddenly saw a need for companions, nannies—entertainment. The synthetic sheathing just wasn’t quite close enough to human flesh and skin. Happily, that desire for human flesh coincided nicely with the advances in growing human skin cells—muscles, internal organs—the whole works. It had actually become far cheaper to use the ‘real’ thing than synthetics and since the cyborgs couldn’t object to and weren’t terrified of nanos like the rest of the population was, they could introduce nanos into the cyborgs to affect repairs.
Not that the company would have objected to making more money off of the government in repairing damaged equipment, but they’d done such an excellent job of convincing the government that their cyborgs were virtually indestructible that the government had demanded a guarantee on the product before they would sign off on the multi-trillion dollar contract.
It wasn’t just the fact that Seth had asked her if she was alright, though, she realized abruptly.
One the things that had always unnerved her about working with the cyborgs was the eyes. They had cold, dead, emotionless eyes. They managed to replicate some emotion through programming that kept them from being quite so stilted in their interactions, that made it possible a lot of the time to simply interact with them as if they were fellow human soldiers. They looked and felt human. As long as they didn’t talk, or confined themselves to one or two word responses and she didn’t look them directly in the eyes, she could pretend her team was just a bunch of recruits just like she was—really big, brawny recruits—but as human as she was, not titanium monsters that could squash her like a bug if their programming was faulty in any way and the notion struck them.
And yet when she’d met Seth’s gaze, she’d seen everything reflected in them that she was feeling in those moments herself—fear of pain and death.
But maybe that was it? Nothing but a reflection of her own fears? Projected onto him?
She wasn’t entirely convinced, but the realization that she’d been frozen with shock and fear shook her. She couldn’t afford to let those emotions take the upper hand or she wasn’t going to get out of this alive!
Considering the bombardment, she didn’t know if they were even going to make it to the ground, but she needed to act when and if they did!
She got her second jolt when they were ordered out and she finally made it to the off-ramp—only to discover that they were still a very long way from the ground, not on it, as she’d expected. Instantly visions of being mangled like a squashed spider when she hit the ground leapt into her mind. Before she could force her way out of the line or demand to be taken lower, Seth, who was behind her, tightened his grip around her torso and stepped off the damned plank into thin air—really thin air!
She screamed all the way down. Fortunately, the landing was enough of a jolt to knock the panic out of her when it deprived her of breath. Reason reared its head as the snow pack around her was peppered with shots from what seemed every direction. Her conditioning took over—thankfully.
The landscape was so starkly white with ice and snow that it almost seemed to glow in the moonlight that bathed it. As she rolled over and scanned her surroundings in one swift, sweep, she saw that the virtually flat plane she’d landed on was littered with black dots of all shapes and sizes—burning debris from the landers that didn’t make it to the drop in one piece, and bodies, some moving, some eerily still. A black bowl of sky capped the nearly featureless landscape.
She couldn’t tell where the enemy position was!
It didn’t help that she couldn’t see a damned thing once her team decided to form a wall around her—to protect her! What were they thinking? They were supposed to be shooting at the damned enemy!
Fight or die, she told herself! The enemy had them pinned down. What to do? Retreat?
Not unless ordered—unfortunately—but she had to struggle with her flight instincts.
Thankfully, the thought had no sooner entered her mind than she heard the command.
Except she was at the front and supposed to lay down fire for those in the rear to drop back.
Fight or die!
She finally managed to spot a flash that gave away an enemy position. Once she began returning fire, she was able to focus on trying to eliminate everyone firing at her. She didn’t realize how anxious she was for her turn to drop back until the moment she’d been waiting for came. A new line had been formed and her team could drop back and take up a position a little further from the enemy.
Yelling for her team to drop back, she leapt to her feet—stupid move! The projectile that slammed into her and smacked her down again drove that home! Blackness swarmed over her. She was in so much pain it took her a few minutes to figure out what had happened. By the time she did, Seth had scooped her up under one arm and was racing across the plane. The jarring raised her pain level until oblivion claimed her. When she came to, she felt hands tugging at her suit. Her mind struggled for a moment to make sense of what was happening and finally produced the conviction that she was being attended by a medic.
Thank god! She wasn’t going to die—yet.
Needing assurance, she opened her eyes with an effort, managed to focus—and then got the shock of her life. Seth was manhandling her—not a medic-borg!
She didn’t even manage to say no before he set her on fire with the damned laser! And she was in too much pain after that to berate him.
She needed to get up and fight. She was aware enough of her surroundings to realize the firefight had intensified, could hear the sounds of battle through the open channel that provided communications for the force on the ground and the dull, muted sounds of intense fighting that penetrated her protective helmet. With a supreme effort of will, she managed to move her arms and hands—or the uninjured one anyway—in a blind search for her weapon. She didn’t find it and the fear of discovering she was unarmed sent a torrent of adrenaline through her that was powerful enough to enable her to roll onto her stomach and perform a wider search. “My weapon. Where’s my weapon?”
“I have it.”
It was Niles who responded—she thought. “Well give it to me, damn it!”
“You have sustained damage, squad leader, Danika.”
“Like I don’t fuckingknowthat when my whole right side is on fire! Give me the damned thing!” she yelled at him with a mixture of fury and terror.
“Time to fall back again,” Seth responded, scooping her up and launching into another bone shaking run that made her pass out again.
When Danika regained consciousness, she found herself looking up at a sheer, white wall of ice. She stared at it blankly, trying to figure out where it had come from when she certainly hadn’t noticed it earlier when she’d surveyed the plane they’d landed on.
