That rocked her back on her heels.Granted, she’d developed the AI program in the hope-belief that itcould be used to defeat the invader, but she realized she hadn’treally seen herself as savior in chief. She’d thought she couldhand it off and someone else could figure out the rest.
And, apparently, they had, althoughshe couldn’t figure out what they had in mind.
Since it didn’t look like there wasanything they could use her for at the moment, though, and it madeher distinctly uneasy watching them work so high up, she turnedaway in search of something she could do to make herselfuseful.
The creek wasn’t far. She was temptedto take a bath since it was pretty warm, but she recalled one ofthe guys had said there were fish in the creak and she decided tosee if she could catch anything. She spent a good hour searchingfor something she might use to catch a fish and then another tryingto fashion a net with the piece of screen wire she found tangled inthe brush outside their shelter.
When she was reasonably satisfied withthe trap she’d made, she began a search for something to bait itwith and came up empty. She found a natural bottleneck in thecreek, though, and set her fish trap there, anchored it and thenbegan searching the banks for any kind of edible roots she couldfind.
She became so focused on her searchfor food, in fact, that it was only by chance that she heard thepatrol.
And she was too far from her weapon toget to it when she did.
She froze when she realized herdanger, struggling to get her brain in gear.
They were nearly upon her when Quanabruptly landed directly beside her and gave her a shove that senther flying toward her weapon. She heard gunfire even as she hit thedirt hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Ignoring the painand the effort to breathe, she grabbed her weapon and drew it toher, rolling and bringing it up to fire at the same time only todiscover that Tau and Xi had joined the fight while she wasstruggling to grab her weapon and get into position.
With no clear shot, she rolled towardcover … and directly into the path of a cyborg. It fired, narrowlymissing her when Tau dove toward it, taking it down.
She managed to get off a couple ofshots, barely clipping two cyborgs, before the fight wasover.
Panting for breath, all four of themfocused on checking the cyborgs for any signs of life and then eachother.
All three of ‘her men’ she discovered,were totally pissed off.
Because, she realized, she’djeopardized the mission if she hadn’t totally fucked everythingup.
She wanted to kick her own ass, butthat was pretty hard to do.
“They will know thatsomething is here of value,” Tau said after a longmoment.
“We should check them tobe certain they had no time to send the information,” Quan pointedout.
Xi merely stared at her for a longmoment and looked away—at the tower they’d been working their assesoff on.
“I’m sorry,” Ultima said,dropping tiredly to her knees. “That was … stupid to the point ofcriminal. If I’d been paying attention ….”
“I could as easily blameQuan as you,” Tau said tightly. “You might still have avoideddetection, but he did not want to chance that you might be attackedwhen none of us were near enough to help you. And Xi did not. And Idid not. So do not horde all of the guilt for yourself. We fuckedup. We were lulled by the lack of activity around us and we may payfor it—all of us.”
It was amazing how much better thatmade her feel, especially when she realized he was right. She’dfrozen and that alone might have saved her from detection, or shemight have been able to avoid discovery by crouching down andcrawling into a hole.
They would never know …now.
Quan had drawn fire when he had leapttoward her to protect her.
Which he wouldn’t have had to do orfelt compelled to do if she’d just stayed in theshelter.
She smiled wanly. “I’m still ever soappreciative that you guys rushed to help me. Thankyou.”
They seemed to relax. Tau insisted onchecking her himself for injury and, once satisfied, told her tostay in the shelter while they disposed of the enemy’s machines inthe hope that it would take longer to track the cyborgs to theirlair if they were carried elsewhere.
Unsaid was the fact that they probablyhad trackers on them that would lead the enemy right to their door,but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion when the traitor, Eml, washaving to replace more and more drones faster because of thesuccess of the home guard.
Ultima nodded, gathered up the foodshe’d found and headed back.
* * * *
Ultima had wanted to collapse in angrygrief when she got to the shelter, despite what Tau had said andshe thought she mostly agreed with. However it had happened,though, she feared all of the work would be for nothing and theywould have to find another way to destroy the invader.
