So maybe it hadn’t been a brilliant military tactic to spread their own forces so thin? Granted it was a big planet and she could see why they wanted to be sure they had enough forces on the ground globally to repel any attempts by the enemy to sneak in the backdoor, but they shouldn’t have just assumed they’d beat the enemy to the planet to start with.
Arrogance, she thought angrily as she scratched through a pile of debris! The arrogant bastards had been so damned sure they were infinitely superior to their enemy, the Andorians, that they were going to be lucky if they didn’t lose the war in this one theater.
“We have managed to locate six habitats that are relatively intact.”
Danika jumped when the voice abruptly broke into her thoughts, whipping her head around to look for Seth when she recognized his voice. It sent a jolt through her to discover that he was standing within a yard of her.
They’d decided that it wasn’t safe to risk any communications via the com units unless they were absolutely necessary. They didn’tknowthat the enemy had managed to break security and had listened to everything they’d said, but if they hadn’t they were damned good at guessing.
It was still a mystery, supposing they had, as to how the Andorians had managed to break the codes so quickly, but Danika was putting her money on a traitor or traitors among them. Nothing else made sense, to her thinking—including the fact that the enemy seemed to be waiting for them when they made the landing.
No getting around the fact thattheirintel had been better than the confederation’s intel!
In any case, the enemy had been pretty damned thorough in demolishing their supplies and, since the sun had risen and with it the temperatures to a balmy zero degrees, they’d decided to conserve what they could of their hab-suits’ built-in supplies—most notably the heater fuel cells.
“Only six?” Danika echoed, dismayed when she’d done a quick mental calculation of their numbers. “That’s only enough room for ….”
“The humans.”
Danika gaped at him. “But … there’s only maybe fifty humans left! At thirty to a barracks ….”
“Thirty six … at the moment. Seventy five made it to the ridge. Mayhap a quarter were lost in the blizzard on the way or died from their wounds. Probably no more than a dozen by night fall. However, the habitats are not barracks. They are for squads … and they are damaged. I did not count the ones we found that could not be patched.”
Stunned disbelief held Danika for several moments before rage took its place. “In other words, we wouldn’t have had housing for all of the troops even if those bastards hadn’t beat us here and blown our supplies all to hell?”
“There will be room for the remaining humans.”
Danika’s lips tightened. “That isn’t good enough, damn it!” The bulk of their force might be cyborgs, but the cyborgs were part biological and the cold would inhibit their ability to fight—and they damned sure needed everybody, cyborgandhuman, that they had left. “Who’s in command?”
“Second Lieutenant Murphy Brown.”
“Oh my god!” It struck her that, in all likelihood, it had been Second Lieutenant Murphy Brown who’d screwed up so royalty in his communications the night before if he was the only officer they had left—and as green as she was, no doubt! “Where is he?”
“I will escort you.”
She didn’t need an escort! Instead of arguing, however, she fell into step beside him. “Have your … uh … nanos repaired the damages?”
Seth sent her a sharp glance, briefly both surprised and alarmed until he realized she was not referring to his malfunctioning behavioral programming but rather the status of his combat readiness. “The damage to my systems was minimal … primarily superficial damage to my biological sheathing. I am currently at ninety percent.”
She frowned, wondering abruptly how he could be at least half biological, or nearly half, and experience nothing more than an awareness of damage. Were there no nerves in his biological sheathing? Or did they just not connect to nerve centers capable of registering pain? “You don’t … feel any pain when you’re wounded?”
Seth’s uneasiness returned. The truth was that he was one hundred percent certain that he shouldnothave felt any pain, but he not onlyhadfelt it—a great deal of it—hestillfelt pain and it was difficult to behave as if he did not. He should not, in point of fact, have felt anything at all. He had been programmed to mimic emotions. He knew the mechanics of displaying emotion and what each gesture and facial expression denoted so that he could recognize emotions in humans and react to them. He had not been designed or programmed tofeelthem, because not only was that not possible. It was not desirable. No matter how many systems checks he had run, however, he had discovered nothing to account for the emotions that seemed to be clogging his objectivity.
The only thing that he had been able to ascertain with certainty was that he was feeling and reacting on a purely animal level to his environment and everything that his body and mind sensed and perceived, which completely defied logic.
He did not understand and that was almost frightening. It was certainly disturbing, but all he could think to do was to attempt to hide his disability until his nanos repaired whatever had caused the problem or he understood it well enough to prevent it from affecting him.
He was still reluctant to lie … to Danika. He did not think he would have a problem lying if anyone else had asked, but she was his squad leader. He had been programmed always to defer to her—to trust her completely. It felt ‘wrong’ to withhold anything from her. “I was not designed to feel, only to record.”
She stopped, grasping his wrist in a gesture to stop that he could not ignore, although he wanted to. He hesitated and then yielded to the silent demand, wondering why her touch had such a profound effect upon him that went so far beyond anything he had expected ever to feel, uncertain of whether he wanted to feel the sensations that flooded him. He discovered that she was studying his face and that was enough to divert his mind from the blinding sensations to a sense of danger.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I beg pardon. I thought that I had responded to your question.”
“I don’t think you thought anything of the kind. You evaded the question.”
He frowned, feeling a flicker of both resentment and dismay at her lack of trust. “I am … confused.”
