The Forgotten Two Page 3

  Unfortunately, her escort didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave her.

  "Tell her she will stay here," Kiel said, addressing Jalen.

  Jalen frowned. "Do you really think it is necessary to confine her to quarters? It is not as if she could go far and completely unlikely that she could do so without being observed."

  "She might think her chances better alone than inside an enemy camp and I prefer not to have to track her down or that she risk being eaten by something outside the settlement," Kiel responded irritably. "And I am fairly certain that it is not a good idea to allow the others to observe her considering the fact that her presence alone has already encouraged a breakdown in discipline."

  Jalen glared at him indignantly while that sank in. It occurred to him fairly quickly, and rather forcefully, that Kiel was right, though-on all counts. He was not in the habit of challenging Kiel's orders. Despite their friendship, Kiel was the senior officer of their platoon and he had not questioned any order from him before, let alone argued with his judgment. Beyond that, as fascinated as he was with her, it had not made him completely oblivious to all else. The others were entirely too interested in her.

  Baen was not even part of their platoon and had insinuated his way into the situation when, by rights, the female was entirely theirs since it was first platoon that had captured her!

  He turned to the female. "I regret, but for now you will be required to remain in quarters."

  "Here?" Danielle asked.

  He frowned. "Yes. You are confined here."

  Danielle nodded but they hadn't really seemed threatening and she decided it couldn't hurt to test her boundaries. "Couldn't I go out to my ship to gather personal belongings? I don't even have clean clothes to put on."

  Jalen frowned, but he knew that Kiel was not going to approve that request and beyond that, since Kiel had pointed out the interest of the others, he did not want her strolling back and forth beneath the noses of the others. "We will bring them here once we have sorted the wreckage and determined what is personal and what is military in nature."

  Danielle's lips tightened, but she hadn't expected anything else. Dismissing the cyborgs, she headed for the stairs to investigate the upper floor. She felt their gazes on her until she reached the top. Thankfully, though, when she peeked down the stairwell, she saw them leaving.

  The upper floor was as open as the lower one. It wasn't hard to pick out the facilities. Beyond the translucent walls of what she assumed was the shower, built to confine the water more than for privacy, there were no other walls. Wondering if that was because the structure had been designed as a prison, she headed toward what she assumed was the toilet to take care of her aching bladder as the first order of business.

  It was clear from the appearance that that was exactly what it was and equally clear that it hadn't been designed for a woman's comfort. Of course the entire settlement seemed more military in nature than a place for families and she hadn't seen a single female since her arrival-just the cyborgs and the typical service bots. Those looked different from the service bots she was used to, but it was obvious that the functions they had been designed for were to meet familiar needs, which meant that they weren't a lot different regardless-not unrecognizable anyway.

  Hesitating briefly when she'd relieved herself, she decided to use the shower while she was certain she had the place to herself. Ordinarily, it wouldn't have occurred to her to worry about it. Truthfully, the place had as much privacy as the barracks where she lived when she was on base-the military wasn't the place for anybody squeamish about nudity-but the Danu made her uneasy and self-conscious to an uncomfortable degree. Her male counterparts back home might and probably did check her out whenever the opportunity arose, but the military frowned upon fraternization and they were careful to be subtle about their interest. The Danu hadn't made any attempt to hide theirs and she wasn't accustomed to being oogled.

  Clean clothes would've been nice, but she supposed she didn't have a lot of room to complain. She hadn't been treated badly enough to warrant the resentment she felt over her situation. She doubted she would've been able to conjure any sense of resentment or rebellion if she'd fallen into the hands of the Nubie. The fact that they weren't biologically similar enough to humans to 'mate' with them hadn't stopped them from raping whatever females they managed to catch.

  There had been horror stories!

  Actually, they'd raped the males, too. They didn't seem to care whether they'd captured male or female-or if the male or female was fully matured-the cold blooded bastards!

  Of course, that could have been because, as far as they could tell, the Nubie were a self-propagating species-and rape within the human species rarely had anything to do with desire. It was generally nothing more than a power trip for the rapist, which was probably why the Nubie rarely missed an opportunity for rape, that and the chance to demean their enemies.

  The shower, she discovered, utilized water for cleaning. She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised when Gertrude had reported that the planet had an abundance of water, but she was. They'd had to use water to clean with when they'd first settled Meridie, but although the planet had plenty of water, they'd learned their lesson when it came to squandering resources! They'd set up less wasteful cleaning facilities as soon as possible!

  It was easier just to use water and there hadn't been but a couple of hundred first settlers-not enough to put a strain on resources-but they knew that would change as the colony grew. They didn't want to befoul the new world the way they had Earth and that meant accepting a little discomfort and sacrificing some conveniences.

  Unhappily, she discovered the Danu weren't as wasteful as she first assumed they were. The water shut off within a handful of minutes. After staring in dismay at the cleanser she'd managed to thoroughly coat herself with and banging on the water dispenser fruitlessly for several moments, she looked around hopefully for something to wipe the soap off with. Angry when she couldn't find anything she settled to wait impatiently for more water. After several more futile attempts to get just a little more water, she stepped from the shower again and considered her dilemma. She could dry off with her dirty jumpsuit or stand around naked until the sticky soap dried or ….

  She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully on the bunk nearest her. Even as she stalked toward it to rip the coverlet off to use to wipe herself off, though, she spied a unit that looked like an air dryer. It was. The moment she stepped within range, it blasted her with warm gusts of air, drying the soap on her skin within moments.

  Reflecting sourly that she would've felt better dirty than sticky with the damned soap left on her skin, she shimmied into her flight suit and fastened it up.

  "They might have at least had the damned courtesy to explain how the facilities worked!" she muttered under her breath. Too miserably uncomfortable to think about anything else for a while, she paced the upper floor restlessly, trying to decide if they limited themselves to one bath a day to conserve water.

  She was really going to be pissed off if she discovered they were only allowed one every other day or every two or three days!

  When her anger had exhausted itself, she realized just how battered and tired she was from the crash and everything afterward. She was still too wired to consider curling up on the bunk, however.

  Remembering that she'd noticed light filtering into the structure when they'd first arrived, she began searching the outer walls for something akin to a window. She discovered that there weren't any windows, per se, almost by accident. There was some sort of apertures, however. They blended so well with the rest of the wall they were hard to find, but motion or touch activated them and these sections became translucent-not completely clear but transparent enough she thought she might have been able to distinguish objects beyond them if there'd been enough light to see. Except for an artificial light here and there, though, there was nothing to see now that it was completely dark outside.

  She was hungry, she decided,
not just feeling weak and washed out from her ordeal. She couldn't recall when she'd eaten last, but it seemed to be a very long time. As doubtful as she was that she would find food in the food preparation area, she went downstairs to search and discovered she was wrong. There was food. She thought that was what it was, anyway. The shelves seemed to be filled with something like field rations. She studied them for a while before it occurred to her that their food might not be safe for human consumption. It seemed to her that they were similar enough that it shouldn't be a problem, but what did she really know?

  Pretty much nothing.

  Dismissing it with the reflection that she wasn't actually hungry enough to risk poisoning herself, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger in her belly, she climbed the stairs again, settled on a bunk and tried to find oblivion. It seemed hopeless at first. The hunger was hard to ignore once acknowledged and beyond that, settling meant opening her mind to thoughts that had been battering at the backdoor for hours. She hadn't allowed herself to acknowledge her fears but attempting to sleep made her vulnerable to those anxieties and it was as hard to silence them as it was to quiet her rumbling stomach.

  * * * *

  Kiel had enough food for thought to make it nigh impossible to rest even though, ordinarily, he had only to relax on his bunk to shut down as if a switch had been flipped. He was churning in a way that he found both disturbing and confusing; restless for some unfathomable reason when he knew he shouldn't be; anxious and angry for reasons almost as unclear and confusing; and at the same time excited.

  Some of it was not only completely logical, but totally understandable to him. They were no longer alone, an island in a vast sea where it seemed there was no other life at all, let alone intelligent life. No one had wanted to acknowledge it, but he thought they had all secretly believed that something had wiped out the Danu. It had seemed the only reasonable explanation for the fact that they had never come and even though he had not wanted to accept that or to accept that they were waiting for something that would never happen, he had been moving closer and closer to that acceptance as time progressed. He thought they all had. It seemed to him that the comments of the others when the alien female had crashed supported that assumption.

  They had all begun to question their purpose, to wonder if there was any logical reason for them to exist at all. When Manuta had created them, it had given them purpose-of a sort. They were to 'live' in the settlements created for the Danu, to protect it and maintain it. They had done that, but he had begun to wonder to what purpose when the Danu did not come.

  The arrival of the female had altered that, irrevocably, although he was not yet certain how beyond the fact that they now knew that there was others, living entities that were not Danu but vastly similar.

  Would others of her kind come to Marchet? And, if they did, what should they do about it? Should they continue to wait for the Danu? Protect the colony for their masters? Or should they welcome her people to inhabit the settlements that had been built for beings like them? And if they did, what would become of them? Would they live alongside these beings? Would they be allowed to? Would they want to?

  He frowned at the last thought. He was not in the habit of thinking in terms of what he did or did not want to do. He felt want, and reluctance, but he had never acknowledged either let alone considered acting upon them.

  Was that a defect? Or was it 'natural' because he was not entirely a machine and had a 'natural' side?

  That natural side had been the bane of his existence. Without it, he would have been as completely impervious to pain, stress, confusion, and boredom as the other robots Manuta had created. With it, he had experienced all of those things, and more, and none of them were to his liking. In fact, he would not have known liking or disliking if not for his biological side and he thought he would have preferred it that way.

  Now, he was not as certain of that, and that was part of the confusion. The female, the woman, had made him feel things that made him feel truly alive for the first time, filling him with expectation, hope, anticipation of a future. Suddenly, liking, wanting, feeling-doubt and confusion-seemed to dominate him, almost as if the robotic part of himself had ceased to exist at all.

  A sense almost of doom seemed to hang over him, warring with the excitement that would not cease to churn through him. After a time, he realized that at least a part of the sense of doom was the understanding that his world had changed irrevocably and would never be the same. Doubt held sway when he had never suffered from that before, the uneasiness that he was not prepared to deal with the changes he could sense on the horizon.

  After a while, realizing the futility of resting, he sat up on his bunk and settled his feet on the floor, summoning the data he had retrieved from Captain Danielle Dubois' onboard computer. His own computer had collected, sorted, and analyzed the data almost as quickly as he had uploaded it, but it was his biological brain that continued to turn it over and over, trying to make sense of it, to understand the incomprehensible.

  The military data was simple and straightforward and did not differ a great deal from his own programming, not enough to cause him any confusion. He did not agree completely with their battle strategy, but then he knew he did not have enough data to have an accurate overview of their situation. He did not know the strength of their enemy, the Nubie, because they did not know. They were fighting blind because they did not. They had not been prepared when the Nubie attacked and had not been able to do much besides defend themselves since. They were struggling to mount an offensive war since they were aware that a purely defensive war made their chances of winning slim, but they had yet to gather enough information to do so.

  The Nubiens apparently knew where every human base and settlement was located and attacked at will. The humans, so far, hadn't been able to find more than a handful of Nubien settlements or military installations. So even though it appeared that the humans had weapons that were superior, they had lost more battles than they had won.

  It should not have mattered to him one way or another. Neither of the species were familiar to him or deserved his loyalty. He was of the Danu and they were not involved that he had been able to determine.

  It did worry him, though.

  It worried him because the humans were so like the Danu, because they might be as close as they ever came to finding the Danu-and they might lose their only chance to fulfill the goals Manuta had envisioned if the Nubiens wiped the humans out.

  Would Manuta arrive at that same conclusion? Would Manuta send them out to ally themselves with the humans to protect a species potentially of great value to them?

  And what if Manuta decided they should not interfere? Should they ignore their creator?

  Technically, Manuta was more than just their creator. Until and unless the Danu actually arrived, Manuta was their leader and they did not have the option of following orders or ignoring them.

  He had never before, in fact, questioned whether he should or should not follow whatever recommendations Manuta made. He had simply accepted that Manuta knew all there was to know, all that was important to the Danu, and its decisions would be based upon that knowledge and logic.

  He did not know what Manuta might decide regarding Danielle, however, and that disturbed him. It had disturbed him even when he had made the decision to take her to Manuta for that decision. It bothered him more now even than it had then.

  Manuta was still functioning satisfactorily, so far as they knew, and free of defect, but he had questioned just how reliable Manuta was many times since his own creation because it had not seemed logical for Manuta to decide to make them as they were. What if Manuta was corrupted in some way? What if his ancient circuits could no longer be relied upon to correctly assess the situation and arrive at an accurate decision as to what was best for the colony?

  As far as that went, he did not think he could trust his own judgment when it seemed to have become clouded by emotion, particularly when he was having trouble underst
anding the emotions that had been triggered by his proximity to Danielle. She had sent his senses into riot before she had done-whatever it was that she had done when she pressed her mouth to his. Afterward-during-he had lost any ability to think at all and he could not say that he had really regained his equilibrium since. If he had, he did not think his thoughts would be so rambling and indecisive and cluttered with emotion.

  * * * *

  Baen's focus was not upon watching for possible threats as it should have been, but then he did not actually anticipate any sort of trouble. Occasionally wild beasts did take it into their heads to graze in the colony fields and leapt over or crawled under the electronic fields erected to protect their food source. However, most of Kiel's platoon and half his own was still in the practice field disassembling Danielle's ship and perfectly capable to handling the problem. Ditto any trouble that might arise if the primitive natives of Marchet decided it would be the perfect opportunity to attack the settlement. In any case, despite his abstraction, he was attuned enough to his surroundings he did not think it possible that he would fail to detect anything out of the ordinary and he felt a compulsion to settle his turmoil.

  Not that he could settle it the way he wanted to.

  The question in his mind was how much he could trust his biological instincts with regards to Danielle. She was the first and only female that he had encountered that was close enough to his own parent species to trigger his mating urges, but could he trust them even if he did recognize that that was it was?

  What worried him was that he had not spent a great deal of time agonizing over whether an attempt at mating would have the desired result and that was illogical enough to disturb him. Until they had Manuta's analysis, none of them would know whether she was even viable as a mate or not, capable of reproducing.

  Should that not be a prime consideration if what he felt truly was the mating urge? The goal, after all, was supposed to be to reproduce.

  But, if it was not the mating urge, what was it?