Cyborg Nation by Kaitlyn O'Connor (e novels to read TXT) 📕

Gideon held up the blanket and studied it a moment and finally tore a section from one end. Removing his sword, he cut a slit in the center of the piece and helped her slip it over her head. Bronte stared down at it doubtfully. It covered her, but it wouldn’t long if the wind caught the open sides. Using her teeth to start a tear, she pulled a couple of narrow strips from the bottom edge, tied them together, and then tied the piece around her beneath her breasts to hold the sides together.

While they ate, Gideon outlined the plan. “You will take point, Jerico, since Gabriel was last to watch and will not be as alert. I will carry Bronte and you, Gabriel, will bring up the rear. We will make better time if we follow the beach as long as possible, but it is more narrow here than I had thought because of the cliffs. We will most likely have to climb the cliffs when the tide comes in.”

He looked at Jerico questioningly when he’d finished.

“I did not have much time to study the terrain,” Jerico said. “But I am certain you are right. We will have to climb. The rocks extend mayhap fifteen or twenty clicks southward from this point.”

“How long do you think it will take us to get to the city?” Bronte asked.

Jerico frowned and sent Gideon a questioning glance.

“We do not know this area well,” Gideon said. “We have spent far more time building our city than mapping this world. There is more of this world unknown than known to us.”

Uneasiness settled in the pit of Bronte’s stomach. She’d suspected they must be a long way from civilization or someone would have found them by now—it’d been a full week by her reckoning since they’d crashed. But she’d been certain it still couldn’t be that far. They’d recognized the sea. “We could be a half a world away,” she said numbly.

“We could,” Gideon agreed, “but we are not. The ship entered the atmosphere only a little off course.”

“Five degrees,” Gabriel supplied helpfully, earning a glare from Gideon.

“ … And drifted more as we came down.”

“But … five degrees! So high up that could be thousands of miles!” Bronte exclaimed in dismay.

Gabriel looked uncomfortable.

Bronte glanced from one man to the other. “You needn’t be glaring daggers and poor Gabriel!” she said tightly. “Don’t you think I would have noticed anyway?”

Gideon’s lips tightened. “We do not have precise calculations.”

“Are we even on the same continent?”

“Yes,” Gabriel, Jerico, and Gideon said almost at the same moment.

Bronte studied their expressions for a moment. “How many continents are there on this planet?” she asked suspiciously.

Gabriel glanced at Gideon and decided to hold his peace.

“One,” Gideon finally admitted with great reluctance.

Bronte stared at him for a long moment, but finally subsided with the reflection that knowing before wouldn’t have changed anything anymore than knowing now did. She was still irritated that they hadn’t told her. She supposed it might be their idea of ‘protecting’ her.

She swallowed her irritation with an effort. “So if we follow the coast we’re bound to find the city, right?”

“We do not need to follow the coast to find our way. We will follow the coast because it is less likely that we will be attacked by the trogs. You may have noticed from their smell that they are not fond of water.”

“It doesn’t mean we’ll be safer by the water just because they stink,” Bronte said testily.

“We will,” Gideon said implacably. “They can not swim and they are terrified of the water.”

“You know this because?”

“We are soldiers. We are too far from the Confederation to concern ourselves with them beyond maintaining a small army to defend ourselves from the unlikely possibility of a random attack. Unless we have business that takes us into their territory there is little need for our services in that respect. We are no more welcome to the natives of this world, but we have taken what we need and now we must defend it from attack. Many times now, we have dealt with them.”

Bronte stared at him in dismay as it sank home that she hadn’t completely appreciated their ‘livelihood’. She’d only been thinking in terms of the dangerous lives they had led, hadn’t considered that that wasn’t something in the past that, while awful, was no longer a threat. She was going to be worrying about them every time they left on a mission—forever. How did women deal with the uncertainty of never knowing when their man left if he was coming back? “Are they crazy?”

“They are of low intelligence, extremely territorial, and ferocious.”

She nodded absently, her mind still wrestling with fresh anxieties. She might’ve been half dead at the time of the attack, but she hadn’t been so out of it that she hadn’t noticed the trogs were fierce to the point of insanity. Their stupidity in attacking cyborgs might have been understandable in the beginning, before they’d had the chance to figure out what they were dealing with. Obviously they did know by now, though. They were just laboring under the impression that they could still take them if they threw enough bodies at them.

The banter that had lightened her spirits only a little earlier hadn’t lifted them enough to combat the thoughts the conversation had stirred up in her mind and she didn’t feel nearly as hopeful as they gathered their belongings and headed out. She had to be carried. As much as she hated the fact that she was an added burden, it wouldn’t help them for her to be hobbling on her crutch. She would’ve slowed them down traveling on her own steam if she’d been whole. As it was, they would have to travel at a snail’s pace with her walking.

Knowing that didn’t stop it from chaffing her. Knowing they could have traveled much faster, probably wouldn’t be in nearly as much danger without her, wore on her spirits