Two of his team members were sitting in the front, and the third was in the last seat in the back of the passenger section. The transport was designed to carry up to twenty-five people, but they were all that was left of their team. Vyken took a seat in the back with his second in command Jolt Somber. His skin color was closer to white than gray, and he had close-cropped red hair.
Matix Tell piloted the craft lifting it high into the air above the tattered city that had once been Chicago. Vyken wondered if the city could be salvaged, but that was not his job. His job was to retrieve the people to rebuild the civilization and eradicate those that would hinder the process. Other teams had been sent to other cities, but Chicago was his city, the city of his birth.
The city may have been ruined, but the cyborg project center was still intact underground on a former dairy farm outside a small town South of the city. That’s where they would establish the enclave for those who wished to revive civilization in that part of North America. It was a massive facility with four levels. The small block building that resembled an ancient milk house still stood. Inside it were the elevators that led to the three of the lower levels.
It was almost an underground city, definitely big enough to hold a small town of people. This was where they would create a pocket of civilization. The cyborgs would find individuals who would come there voluntarily. Those people would build a community using the ancient founding principles of what used to be the USA.
Most of the tech in the center was old, but their AI still worked. It was filled with the knowledge humanity collected before some overzealous planet surveyors got stupid and tried to take a colonized planet from aliens. It was akin to how the Europeans took North and South America from the natives in an earlier age.
Even though the incident was not Federation sanctioned, the Mesaarkan Confederation was wholly unforgiving for the massacre of their people on New Procyon Three. Because the corporation responsible was based on Earth, the Mesaarkans reeked destruction over the whole planet in a war that lasted over a hundred years.
Two dozen planets in the United Galactic Federation were left in ruin. If not for the Wholaskans, an ancient alien race negotiating peace, the war might still be going on. A few hundred Mesaarkan people were killed on New Procyon 3. The Mesaarkans killed billions. The Wholaskans had a way of making them see their dead had been avenged millions of times over.
The only space force Earth had left were the cyborgs. But with the Mesaarkans peace treaty, there was no one left for them to fight. Earth wasn’t a place Vyken thought he wanted to stay forever, just until he had carried out the Admiral’s last wishes.
The cyborg forces had officially been released from duty by the Federation. Vyken and his team were mainly on their own, with their activities being followed by Cyborg Command. Most of the cyborgs released were already on their way to settle a world they found in their travels during the war. There would be room for Vyken and his brothers if they decided to actually go there. There was time to decide on that later.
