Vyken raised his eyebrows at Enclave manager’s outburst. “Inside the Enclave, you are in control. Will you also determine who these females may breed with who are not cyborgs?”
“No, of course not, but you cannot keep Danya from her father. Who do you think will have her after you are finished with her?” Jacob persisted.
“I am not holding Danya against her will. She is my female, and I am her male.” Vyken was losing patience with Jacob Black’s utter bigotry. “I will not be finished with her until I breathe my last breath.”
“Well, her father hasn’t been allowed to see her in days since you took her.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“It’s what I have observed,” Jacob admitted.
“They have spoken on their coms. James is busy teaching and helping your new people settle in, and Danya has been busy with me.” Vyken said. “She is free to come see her father or anyone else here and her father is welcome on our ship, so there is no problem here.”
“Of course, you would think that. When are you going to remove the rest of the cyborgs from level four and gather materials to convert it into living space?”
“Command is sending a ship with machinery and supplies so that we can send some of them on a similar mission to Farringay. We will be activating more of them to prepare for that mission, and more to bring order in old Chicago. We need a place to for them to stay before we can remove them from your facility,” said Vyken, far calmer than he felt.
Attitudes like Black’s were what started the war with the Mesaarkans because some bigoted colonials refused to live peacefully alongside humanoids who were different from them. The humans killed them all in an unprovoked massacre. Their stupidity cost the lives of billions of humans.
Vyken accessed his memory of Admiral Gregor and found no reference to Jacob Black’s bigoted attitude toward cyborgs. Gregor must not have known. Vyken hadn’t known until now. Black was no more fit to lead this enclave than the thugs from whom Vyken had taken Danya and her father. Next, he would probably choose people to join based on the color or their skin. Cyborgs came in many colors, even more than natural humans.
Black himself might not be alive if it weren’t for the cyborgs. Even before the Wholaskans negotiated peace with the Mesaarkans, the cyborgs were the ones keeping the aliens from destroying the entire planet. The Earth could have been just another asteroid belt orbiting the sun instead of a world that could be rehabilitated.
Not only that, but the few hundred people brought to the enclave so far would not be able to prepare the soil and plant crops in time to harvest them by winter. They would need help from the cyborgs who would have to do most of it by hand because the machinery would not arrive soon enough. They would probably have to fabricate the picks and shovels to even do that.
Vyken balled his hands into tight fists as his side resisting the extreme temptation to reach across the desk and choke the life out of Jacob Black. Only the fact that he had no legal justification stopped him, this time.
Black was one of those eugenicists that believed only specific people should be allowed to breed. Apparently, cyborgs were not included in his list. This was not the purpose of the Enclave according to Admiral Gregor. It was supposed to restore the population to rebuild civilization on Earth---not decide who gets to procreate and who doesn’t.
Attempts had been made before on Earth to eradicate certain strains from the human genome, killing millions, under the mistaken belief their elimination would make the world a better place. That didn’t happen, and it wasn’t going to happen now.
Cyborgs may have been bred in test tubes and spawned in nurturing tanks, but that didn’t make them less human than those born naturally. The fact remained their genetic makeup was entirely human. Their cybernetic enhancements didn’t change that.
