“What can you tell us about this Enclave?” James asked Vyken. “What are their plans for the people we bring into it?” He sat with Danya, and Vyken at a table in the mess hall where he had just finished eating.
“The ultimate goal is to rebuild a democratic society worldwide, starting with the farmland here and the underground structure. They plan to give everyone an education and teach them skills to help build a community around the farm.” Vyken explained. “That’s the information we were given with our final invitation.”
“Can we trust these people?” James wondered. “We have struggled for years with no one to help us, and it’s only gotten worse instead of better. Why didn’t they start helping us before this?”
Vyken shook his head. “Those are questions I can’t answer. I’ll comm Jacob Black ask him for a tour and have him explain their overall plan for the Enclave. Those details weren’t included in our communication with them.”
“Forgive me if I am skeptical about this plan,” James said. “Unlike a lot of people these days, I learned how to read and write, and Danya learned as well. Her mother and I scavenged books wherever we could because we had no electricity or batteries to run any tech that we found. We read a lot of history, social science, and even fiction. There are so many ways a thing like this can go wrong with even the best of intentions.”
“I am familiar with the history of this world as well,” Vykan said. “This mission was the last request we received before our commander died. We have outlived all of our human forces and all but the remnants of the Earth government. There is no one left to force us to do anything.”
“Then why did you come back here? You have a starship, you can go anywhere,” James said. “Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful when you showed up when you did.”
“I was made here,” Vyken said. “This is my homeworld, too. My brothers and I decided it was worth trying to save it before we went our own way. We also thought we might find mates, as I found Danya.”
“Danya?” James looked at his daughter, eyebrows raised.
“We’ve got sparks, Dad. That’s all I can tell you.”
“I know she is the one,” Vyken said. “I just have to convince her of that.”
There was a great deal of heat in his gaze as his eyes met Danya’s.
“And when you leave?”
“I won’t leave without Danya; however, our leaving is not decided. You would be welcome to come as well,” Vyken said, meeting her gaze as he said it. “There is a world the cyborgs have built---a colony called Phantom. Only cyborgs know the location.”
“We haven’t even talked about it yet, Dad,” Danya quickly pointed out. “I have not consented to be his mate.”
“Your father asked my intention. What you want matters very much to me. Just think about it for now, and I will ask when I need your decision.”
“That’s fair.” She nodded, blushing at his appreciative gaze.
As they chatted about the Enclave, Vyken linked with their com center to request a tour for James and Danya. Jacob Black answered almost immediately inviting them to come right over.
Jacob Black met them at the elevator in the block milk house. He was a dark-haired man of medium height and a bit stocky. His amber eyes lit with interest as they focused on Danya. The khaki cargo pants and a black t-shirt that was just a bit snug over her ample breasts emphasized her sexy figure. Her long hair was now neatly braided down her back. One look at Vyken’s dark look cooled his interest almost immediately. There was something about Black that needled Vyken’s human side, and it was not just his interest in Danya.
They entered the elevator together and took it down the equivalent of three stories to the first underground level of the old cyborg facility now dubbed The Enclave.
“Vyken Dark, at last, we meet,” Jacob Black said as the doors closed behind them.
Jacob would have offered his hand, but cyborgs shunned the practice. Instead, he shook hands with James and Danya. “Come, let me show you around.” He led the way out into the corridor. James fell into step beside Jacob and Danya walked with Vyken.
Vyken didn’t exactly need the tour because this was where he was born over eighty years before. He knew the corridors in the facility as well as he knew the ship he’d served on since he left the facility. The colors were a little brighter, but the place hadn’t changed that much.
There was a block of offices near the elevators then the staff apartments. Whole families lived there in the days when the facility was growing genetically engineered cyborg embryos in tanks on the third level lower. That’s what Vyken wanted to see, and he didn’t plan to ask permission.
James and Jacob chatted animatedly as they headed for an apartment. Vyken leaned down and whispered in Danya’s ear, “Go with them, I’ll catch up with you. I need to check on something.”
She nodded and gave him a look that let him know she wanted to know about it later.
Vyken turned and ran back down the hall with the silent stealth of an assassin. Instead of taking the elevator, he turned to the right and quietly opened the door to the stairwell. He leaped from the top landing to the next landing until he reached the third lower level.
The corridor was dimly lit, but Vyken’s enhanced vision allowed him to see just fine. He first stopped at the embryo lab and nurtury. The door was open, so he went inside. The nurturing tanks were all empty, and the room smelled dusty. In the corner, the liquid nitrogen vault where the frozen embryos were stored was still operational. Vyken connected with the unit monitor and discerned that there were still ten thousand viable embryos contained within. He frowned. What are they going to do with these?
Vyken walked from room to room, rooms that used be labs where the cyborgs went through different processes throughout their development. Those were obviously abandoned decades before. It was actually the last chamber he was interested in. That was where the cyborgs ready for deployment were stored in stasis. The door was locked electronically, but that didn’t stop him.
His processor broke the code in seconds, and the door slid open automatically. What he saw stunned him. There were rows of naked cyborgs in active stasis lockers, ten different genetic lines of thirty in each section. Grown to adulthood, trained and placed in stasis waiting to be deployed for at least fifty years, maybe more. Why were they never deployed?
The Federation could have used every one of them. Untold human and cyborg lives had been lost because they lacked the manpower to defend their positions. Reinforcement never came. All these men standing there waiting to begin their lives for fifty years and they were still waiting. It was an abomination! They deserved to live! Vyken was going to make sure they had the chance.
By now, Jacob Black was well aware that he had wandered off on his own. Vyken wasn’t intimidated in the least by Black. He didn’t take orders from Black. His orders regarding the cyborgs came from the Cyborg Command. He could only guess that they didn’t know about the three hundred viable cyborgs in the depths of this facility. Vyken wasn’t sure he was going to tell them either. He didn’t trust Black not to have them terminated. Natural humans liked to call it decommissioned.
It didn’t sound as bad as killing them. In Vyken’s mind, it would be the murder of cyborgs that couldn’t defend themselves. Even though they were classified as sentient beings, they could debate these had never been activated. Therefore they had never actually been alive. That was a bunch of crap! It was a very thin excuse to justify mass murder. It wasn’t going to happen. They were going over to the Starfire, and so were the embryos.
Vyken paced around the room then up and down the rows of encased cyborgs. They were all alive and ready for release. He was tempted to start bringing them out of stasis immediately. There was room on the Starfire for all of them, and he could get this job done a lot faster if he had more than four cyborgs to do it.
They were safe for now. Vyken decided to go back to level one and catch up with Black and his friends. He left the chamber, and the door slid closed behind him. He ran down the corridor and took the stairwell back up to level one, climbing the steps four at a time. Vyken had been gone ten minutes when he caught up with the other three people.
They hadn’t progressed very far in the tour as James got into a lengthy discussion with Jacob about the administration of the Enclave. Jacob glanced at Vyken as he rejoined them. A quick raise of his dark brows was the only indication that Jacob had noticed his absence. He would talk to Jacob later, privately to find out what he knew about the third level.
“Currently we have about forty people living here. Some of them are descendants of the technicians that ran the cyborg labs in the third level,” Jacob explained. “We currently don’t use that level, and no one goes down there.” He glanced at Vyken pointedly.
“That, seems a waste of space, don’t you think?” Vyken said. “There is the same amount of space on each level. You could probably house a few hundred people down there.”
“It would be something to consider, only the cyborg facility must be dismantled before it can be converted to living space,” Jacob said, “but we just don’t have the manpower. That’s why your help is needed to bring more people into the Enclave.”
“That’s why I wanted to come here and talk with you,” James said. “I’ve lived in the city all my life, and it’s only gotten worse. It would be impossible to restore civilization there without an army to make it safe.”
“We were finally going to leave the city when we got jumped by some thugs,” Danya said. “They would have killed Dad if Vyken hadn’t come along when he did.”
“But there are still good people living there that need help to get out,” James added. “Now that I’ve seen what you have started here, I will help Vyken’s team rescue them.”
“We would certainly appreciate it. So many of the core worlds of the Federation have been devastated by the war, they just don’t have the resources to give us the help that we need.”
“They don’t even know when they can begin rebuilding the Eastern starport or any starport on this world,” Jacob said.
“Earth seems to have gotten the worst of it,” Vyken said.
“Where are you going to get the materials to build homes on the surface?” James asked.
“We are going to scavenge them from what’s left of the buildings in the surrounding countryside for a start, then trees, and rocks. Even though there are no mass communications restored yet, our computers have the information we need to plan and build our community.”
“I think I’ve heard and seen enough,” James said. “I was also hoping to go back to our home to get our things while we were out looking for people to join the Enclave.”
“We can do that,” Vyken said. “Jacob, I want to speak to you privately before we go.”
“We can go to my office,” Jacob said. “James, Danya, you can take a seat in the waiting room by my office.
“Do you know what’s on level three?” Vyken demanded.
“Remnants of the cyborg breeding facility,” Jacob said carefully.
“Not just remnants,” Vyken said. “There are three hundred cyborgs in stasis and a tank full of frozen embryos down there! Just what are you going to do with them?”
“I haven’t brought it up with the council, yet, but I thought we could turn them over to the Federation,” Jacob said.
“No! I am authorized by Cyborg Command to handle them. They are self-aware sentient beings, and they have rights,” Vyken replied adamantly. “That is Federation Law and your council has no say over it.”
“When did this happen?” Jacob asked. “We haven’t had news from the Federation in a while.”
“It was a condition the Wholaskan’s requested for negotiating peace with the Mesaarkans. Cyborgs and not slaves nor are they machines.”
“But they’re bred for fighting and killing, you can’t just put them out in society.”
“My brothers and I will take them to our ship and finish their training. They can help us with our mission here,” Vyken said.
“Then what?”
“It will be their choice to stay or go,” Vyken said.
“But three hundred?”
“We’ll take them all,” Vyken said. “They are alive, and they are going to have a chance to live.”
“Who is going to control them?” Jacob asked.
“I am ranking officer of this unit,” Vyken said. “They will be under my command.”
Jacob eyed the cyborg. He didn’t like the thought of turning three hundred cyborgs loose. The planet had already been ravaged to the brink. Cyborgs were the most dangerous beings on the earth. Vyken could almost read Jacob’s thoughts by the look on his face.
Vyken had spent the better part of a century working with humans, and he had learned to read them. Jacob Black seemed to be a bit of a purist. Many in the beginning thought cyborgs were the property of the entity that created them. Vyken himself had been treated as such in the beginning. Some humans even considered them machines.
There were also many humans who knew their treatment was wrong. They petitioned the Federation Council to reclassify the cyborgs as sentient humanoids because they were bred from human embryos.
“Even though we are bred to be warriors we have protocols for law enforcement and peacetime behaviors,” Vyken said calmly. “I’ve had decades of experience supervising newly activated cyborgs. My brothers and I will take care of them.”