Simban took a step back. “I knew they would ask for the device. They were completely entranced by it. I’m sure it’s the only reason they let us on board in the first place.”
Borian crossed his arms. “We shouldn’t give it to them. We can’t forget that, for now, we’re in prison, and the device is the only thing we have.”
“I don’t see how keeping it from them puts us in a better position,” Irielle said slowly. “The facts are that we are on their ship, that we’re going to die if the Ardaks catch us, and we need whatever resources they have to help Aurora. I suggest we cooperate.”
“I don’t think they want to hurt us. They just want to use the information on the device to help the resistance,” Fayelle added.
“We don’t have any guarantee of that,” Borian argued.
“It’s true that at this point helping the ARF does not guarantee that they will help us,” Mordjan stated flatly. “It’s a long shot at best.”
Fayelle’s eyes shot to him. “No, but they seem to want to help us. High Leader Ruith also said that we could stay with the device and watch them analyze it, which means we’ll get to see what they uncover.”
“Then we should definitely do it,” Irielle said. “That device has so much information on it that it will take years for us to process it. It would be good for us to see how the resistance processes the information.”
“You’re just saying that because they’re elves,” Nordan said.
Irielle shot him an irritated look but said nothing.
“What do you think we should do?” Simban asked Mordjan.
“Out of the few options we have, I think we should give them the device. They obviously still have more advanced technology than we do and more knowledge of the Ardaks. They’ve also agreed to let us see what they uncover. I think we should give it to them and hope they uncover something useful. It is a better use of our time than being locked up in here, and at least we have a chance to discover something that might help Aurora.”
“All right, let’s say we give them the device but they can’t do anything with it. How does it hurt us at this point?” Nordan asked.
“I guess it doesn’t hurt us. Not really,” Simban said, finally adding his voice to the debate. “Okay, since all we have is an array of bad options, let’s take a vote. Give it to them and pray they come up with something or just sit in here with it and pray they come up with something else on their own. Everyone in favor of giving it to them raise your hand.”
Slowly, all hands rose.
Mordjan turned to her. “Our mission is now the device. We have to find out everything we can about what’s on it and then figure out a way to convince the resistance to help us.”
Simban gave him a skeptical glance. “Do you really think they’ll get anything?”
Mordjan shrugged, his expression matching in skepticism. “They think they can do a lot of things. Let’s wait until we have proof.”
When Saara returned for their answer, Mordjan was ready. He held out the device when she walked in, and for a moment, her face showed relief. “All right. You and Fayelle follow me.”
They exited the room into the corridor again.
“Listen, the med bay is a bit overtaxed at the moment. There are a lot of wounded from the battle we were in before going to the base—the high medic has been in surgeries almost constantly. You need to stay with Zaleria, our second medic, or whoever she assigns to review the device, which you are to stay with at all times.”
Fayelle nodded, and Mordjan was silent, his jaw tight. If there was one thing she knew about Mordjan, it was that he didn’t like not having complete control over situations. He was so used to being in charge that this was probably killing him.
Mordjan shot her a glance that Saara couldn’t see. He was obviously not impressed with the resistance so far. They had weapons that didn’t work, a battered ship full of injured warriors, and weren’t able to copy the device or call for backup. Even she acknowledged that their situation wasn’t ideal.
“Here we are,” Saara said as they entered an enormous room with small bays along each side and several other sections adjoined by offshooting corridors. Saara pointed at several corridors. “There are other bays down those halls, as well as areas for surgeries and labs. This one is partitioned off into separate sections by expandable dividers so that the patients can have a bit of privacy.”
Fayelle felt like a student on the first day of school. She was eager to learn what each section was for, what the equipment in the center of the bay was for, and what types of surgeries they were performing.
But they were met by another elf whose expression was cold.
“This is Second Medic Zaleria,” Saara introduced her. “She works directly under High Medic Tassarion.”
The woman didn’t acknowledge them, and her expression didn’t change. “Where is the device?” The words were formal and without inflection.
Fayelle handed it to her.
“I’m sorry, but I have to leave you now,” the second leader said. “I’ll be working with Ruith, trying to call for help or fix another section of the ship. Please remain with Second Medic Zaleria at all times.” Saara inclined her head slightly at the medic and departed.
Second Medic Zaleria took the device and inserted it into a small hole in the console in front of her. “You two can watch over my shoulder but don’t talk.”
Heat rose on Fayelle’s face at the woman’s rudeness, but she remained silent. Her purpose was to learn, not to teach manners. She had thought she was a great healer, one of the best even in the village she’d grown up in, but she knew better. This medical wing exemplified their technological ability, and she couldn’t help but feel that it made her healing ability look rudimentary.
It took the medic a few moments to enter a name and a passcode for the resistance on the device. Once she was in, she clicked the link to the medical files and read the headings there. It wasn’t long before she clicked “Cyborgs,” scanned the files, then moved to “Experimental Technology.”
“Are you looking for information on the cyborgs?” Mordjan asked.
“Quiet,” Second Medic Zaleria snapped.
Fayelle sent Mordjan a look of irritation and thought he might say something to the medic, but his gaze was focused on the screen.
Zaleria moved into a section that was just listed by numbers rather than names, and clicked through files almost faster than Fayelle could follow, and subfile after subfile flashed across the screen. She seemed to read only the headings and the first line or two. Occasionally, she would scan through a document, her eyes searching the diagrams.
Soon, Fayelle was hopelessly lost and could only hope that Mordjan was able to follow it. It wasn’t until her eyes were swimming and she looked away that Fayelle realized the medic was doing it on purpose. Despite what Ruith had said, they didn’t really want Fayelle and Mordjan to know what was in those files.
What could be so important that the resistance didn’t want them to know about it? And why were they here? For the first time, she wondered why they had been taken to medical, rather than to weapons. It was almost as if they were looking for something in particular.
As she rested her eyes, she turned away and saw that they weren’t alone in the room. At some point, another cyborg had entered, only he was unlike any cyborg she had ever seen before. His legs were actually made of metal and didn’t have flesh over them like the cyborgs she knew.
“Oh gods,” Second Medic Zaleria muttered, bringing her attention back to the screen. “Oh gods. I found it.”
“What is it?” Fayelle asked. “What did you find?”
Mordjan silenced her with a shake of his head, his eyes still on the screen.
“I can’t believe it.” She clicked on another file. “It’s better than Tass suspected.” She raised her wrist and activated the small device that all the rebels wore. “I need High Medic Tassarion in here right away.”
Then she turned back to Fayelle, i
ndicating a diagram of a cyborg with various arrows pointing to different parts of the body. “These are the latest adaptations the Ardaks are planning to do on the cyborgs, and they are pretty unbelievable. It would make them the strongest beings we’ve ever seen.”
The cyborg with the metal parts came to join them and looked at the screen over their shoulders. “Hi, my name is Jovjan.”
“I’m Fayelle,” she replied. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m surprised you’re on this ship, given Ruith’s feelings about cyborgs.”
Jovjan laughed. “You must forgive our high leader—he has no sense of humor.” The cyborg even grinned at Zaleria’s frown after she turned back to the screen. “High Medic Tassarion has a way to shield some of us from Ardak control,” he explained. “But he can’t do it with all cyborgs. And it takes a surgery—he has to put you to sleep to work on the chip. I’m not sure why.”
Fayelle felt a surge of hope. Maybe he could shield Mordjan and the others. Surely their chips would be capable of that. Jovjan looked very . . . primitive. She tried to remember what she’d learned about cyborgs from the Ardak device. The one thing she’d learned was that as the cyborgs became more advanced, the incisions on the base of their necks became smaller, and the blinking light slower, their parts more advanced.
Jovjan was obviously a very early model, his cybernetic limbs simply metal bars. Perhaps his chip was also primitive. That might make him less controllable.
Jovjan continued to scan the file. After a moment, his eyes widened. “Is this for real?”
“Yes, I believe so,” Zaleria said. “They have performed and planned some incredible experiments on the cyborgs. This looks to be completely reinvented cybernetic technology that would attach to existing cyborgs.”
She scrolled down the file to different diagrams.
“Are those the suits?”
“It looks like it, yes. If these documents are to be believed, these suits will make them almost godlike in their power. They will definitely rival our elders.” She tilted her head. “That would make them the strongest warriors we’ve ever seen.”
“How did you know these would be here?”
“The device we got two years ago had similar files. We were hoping this would have updated versions.”
Staring at the screen, Fayelle began to get a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. This was why the elves had taken them to medical instead of engineering. The high medic had been looking for a weapon.
And they had just found it.
Slowly, she reached for Mordjan’s hand. From the tightness of his grip, she knew he’d just come to the same conclusion.
A glance at the wall told her there were only twenty hours and thirty minutes before they were attacked by Ardaks. Did they really think they were going to change the cyborgs into these fighting machines with so little time? Just the suits alone would take days to make.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, focusing on the magic running through her from the touch of Mordjan’s hand. There had been rumors that only one in four males survived when they created the cyborgs on Aurora. How risky would it be to turn them into these weapons? And would the ARF actually let them refuse?
Unconsciously, her hand tightened around his. She didn’t want anything to happen to him. Despite his poor attitude, she was actually beginning to like him.
Chapter Thirteen
Mordjan
Mordjan was torn between trying to lock the images on the screen into his memory and giving in to his emotions. They had found the Ardak plans for these upgrades, and he didn’t like the way Zaleria kept glancing at him.
An elf sprinted into the room, disheveled and slightly out of breath. He was tall, commanding, and wearing a white jacket that was slightly crumpled. His long brown hair fell several inches past his shoulders and was pulled back on the top. His eyes glowed gold, threaded with a silver light that Mordjan had never seen before.
“You called me?”
Second Medic Zaleria rose, giving him her seat. “You have to see these files, High Medic Tassarion. You aren’t going to believe it. What they were experimenting with, what they had envisioned for the cyborgs.”
The elf, Tass, looked to the screen and cursed quietly under his breath. “Traako.” He clicked the next file. “Jaffete.” Then he went to the next. “Do you know what this means? This could change everything for us. The Ardaks were going to create the ultimate weapons, ones with massive power. And even better, ones with brains.”
“From what I’ve read, most of it hasn’t been tested yet. It’s just theoretical at this point.”
“We have a few cyborgs that you’ve freed from Ardak control. We could ask for volunteers and begin to do some of these upgrades on them.”
“Could? No, I’d say this is mandatory.”
Mordjan felt the air being sucked out of him. Did these elves not understand what the cyborgs had already gone through? He could understand asking for volunteers, but forcing them to do the upgrades would make them no better than the Ardaks.
That meant they were looking at the cyborgs as lesser beings. Unwittingly, Mordjan had led himself and the other cyborgs right into a situation that was just as perilous as the one they’d freed themselves from on Aurora.
“Would you even be able to do the upgrades with the supplies on the ship?” Zaleria asked the high medic.
“Yes, I believe so.” Tassarion turned to Fayelle. “How old is this information?”
Fayelle held up her hands. “I’m not sure.”
“We got it just after we rescued Tristin,” Mordjan stated. “But I don’t know exactly when Ouirer created the device.”
“Well, if the Ardaks began creating these two weeks ago, we’re already behind. Even if we weren’t going to be annihilated as soon as we drop out of hyperdrive, we’d have to do this.”
“Maybe we should ask High Leader Ruith about this. From these files, we don’t know that they’ve performed any of these experiments on live beings. They look extraordinarily dangerous,” Zaleria cautioned him. “Even the Ardaks were uncertain of the outcome.”
“Traako. That’s just the cost of war. There may be casualties before we can perfect it, but our men are giving up their lives every day on over a hundred battlefields. This is the chance for something more.”
“I’ll do it,” came a voice from behind them.
Fayelle turned to see Jovjan, who had been standing silently in the background.
“What if I told you the chances were 50 percent that you would die?” Second Medic Zaleria asked him.
Jovjan held up a metal arm and his jovial expression cracked a bit. “Being a cyborg hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be for me, to be honest. I’d like the chance to be something more.”
High Medic Tassarion turned to Mordjan. “What about you and the other cyborgs? Would they want to volunteer?”
“Let me talk to them,” he finally ground out.
“How dangerous did you say it was?” Fayelle asked.
“As dangerous as it gets.” Tassarion scanned through a file with the heading of “Stage Two. ““The Ardak hypothesized three stages to upgrade a current cyborg, and there is a risk of death at every stage. But if even half make it through the change, the results could turn the tide for us in this war.”
“I think someone needs to clearly explain the risks to them before asking them to volunteer,” Fayelle replied. “And you are asking for volunteers, right?”
High Medic Tassarion sighed. “Clearly, I’m discussing this with the wrong people. Let’s talk to all the cyborgs and see what they have to say about trying to win the war against the Ardaks. Zaleria, get the cyborgs into the med bay for a conference in twenty. I’ll get Darion to do this up as a presentation.” He rose from the console and headed out the way they’d come in.
Zaleria rose and motioned for them to follow her back to the holding cell.
Mordjan grabbed for Fayelle’s hand as they followed her and squeezed it. �
��It’s going to be all right.”
“Nothing about this situation is all right,” she whispered back. “And I’m not sure that a starry presentation is going to change any of that.”
Deep down, he had the disturbing feeling that she was right.
Chapter Fourteen
Fayelle
Zaleria gathered the others and then they proceeded back to the medical bay. When they arrived, a table close to the entrance of the bay was set out with a small banquet.
“Lambs to the slaughter?” Mordjan whispered into her ear.
Looking at the scene before her, she was forced to agree with his assessment. Nordan and Borian had already seated themselves and were shoveling food onto their plates. Mordjan and Fayelle took two places opposite them and served themselves. Irielle sat between Fayelle and Simban.
Four other cyborgs arrived several minutes later and Jovjan stepped forward with a smile. “I’m Jovjan. This is Chihon.” Jovjan gestured with a metal arm at himself, then at an extremely large, muscular cyborg. “And these two are Bradan and Jadan.” The last two cyborgs looked exactly alike, and she assumed they were twins.
“Welcome,” Mordjan replied, introducing them.
Fayelle saw that the other three cyborgs were various stages of upgrades from Jovjan. Chihon was actually a head taller than Mordjan and Simban, with long white hair that was shocking against his darker skin and a sharply chiseled jaw. He turned away and she saw that he was probably the earliest upgrade, with a large incision and blinking light at the back of his neck that matched the size of Simban’s and Mordjan’s. He had flesh on his arms, but his legs were plain metal.
Then came Bradan and then Jadan. They were obviously twins, with matching muscular bodies and blue-green eyes. They were shorter and slightly smaller than Mordjan and Simban, and their short blond hair was swept upward and to the side in a kind of wave. The only way she could clearly tell the difference between them was the size of the incision at the base of their necks. The later models had smaller incisions, and their blinking lights were also smaller, the blinking slower. Jadan’s chip may have been smaller than his brother’s but it wasn’t as small as Borian’s or Nordan’s. She couldn’t tell which of their limbs were enhanced, if any. Their slender physiques and blond hair reminded her of elves, yet their ears weren’t pointed and they had more muscle.
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