Chapter One
Farringay had been a beautiful city before the war. It was not as big as old Chicago, but its ultra-modern architecture had once made an elegant skyline. That was before the Mesaarkans came and bombed every major city on Earth to ruin. Farringay was no exception.
Jolt Somber had never seen it before the Mesaarkans came. He and his brethren cyborg warriors had been created after the destruction in an underground facility south of old Chicago. They had emerged as adults from the nurturing tanks where they were grown to maturity. Just weeks after that they were sent to fight the Mesaarkans. Eighty-one years later they were back on Earth, trying to pick up the pieces of a once thriving civilization.
This was Jolt’s first solo command over a contingent of 500 cyborgs. The plans called for four square miles of the city to be cleared before the rebuilding could start. First, they had to get the people out that made their homes in the ruined buildings.
Where the skyline had once been an artistic display of lines and shapes, it was now a conglomeration of tattered buildings and rubble. The streets were pockmarked and the pavement crumbled. Everything seemed to be coated with dust and ash that fell back to earth after the explosions.
Many structures remained partially intact, and a few were untouched except for the coating of dirt and ash. Any building that could provide shelter from the elements was likely to be occupied by descendants of the survivors. The cyborgs were there to roust them out before demolishing the remnants of a once-charming city.
Farringay did not seem like a better choice for the new Earth starport than old Chicago, Jolt thought as he picked his way through the rubble in the crumbling city streets. Commander Dark agreed, but the orders came from the Federation---the United Galactic Federation of Worlds. They wanted a starport in Farringay, and they would get one.
Jolt Somber had just broken off from his team to take the next street in the ruins on his own. He was in full body armor because some of the gangs had more potent modern weapons than the projectile pistols most of them used. Many had taken bullets since they started patrolling the ruins to bring people to the Enclave south of old Chicago.
Jolt cleared the first building on the left using his internal scanners to check for people inside. Then he tossed a demolition grenade in through an empty window frame and moved on to the next building. He stopped and took cover at the corner when he heard a moan so soft he almost thought he’d imagined it.
“Help me…”
This time he knew he’d heard someone. “Where are you?” Jolt called out. He needed to hear it again so he could pinpoint it. Without the enhanced hearing of a cyborg, he might not have heard. An explosion went off nearby, so he sent a command through the internal cyborg network for the others to pause detonating any more implosions so he could hear the soft voice.
“Here…” It was barely a whisper, but Jolt determined it had come from the next alley.
He ran to where he thought he’d heard the sound, and he found the source. Under an old stairwell, lay a nearly naked female with what was left of her clothing strewn around her in pieces. As he approached an ominous feeling of dread stole through him.
As Jolt ran to where she lay, he caught her scent. He came to an abrupt stop and roared his rage and anguish. This was not how he expected to findhisfemale---violated and almost dead. She was badly damaged. Her face was puffy, bruised, and bloody. One eye was swollen shut, and she had been stabbed.
She was dying.Hisfemale was slipping away before his eyes. Emotions he had never felt before flooded his mind and paralyzed him with rage and grief. He would lose his female before he ever got the chance to know her, to love her. Had he only found her in time to watch her die?
“Help me,” she whispered again. Her soft voice broke through his emotional turmoil, reminding him that she wasn’t dead yet.
“Yes, I’m going to help you,” he said. He quickly switched into logic mode, shutting out the raging human emotions so he could concentrate on what he needed to do to keep her alive. He had emergency medical training.
He signaled their medic to come to his location immediately with their hover transport and a stretcher. Meanwhile, he knelt beside her and pulled out a loaded injector of nanites and quickly pressed it to her jugular vein.
Jolt receded his helmet as she opened her good eye and looked up at him fearfully. “Our medic is coming. The nanites will start repairing your damage.”
He pulled out a thin folded sheet of the silver plastic blanket to cover her. He picked up her wrist and checked her pulse it was weak but steady. Knox Brakar, the new healer, assigned to his team, responded immediately and sped to their location.
Jolt’s CPU only blocked some of his emotional response, to the despicable attack on his female. Although it controlled his inner rage, he was thinking of the ways he could torture them for the longest time before they died.
“You gave her the nanocybot injection?”
Jolt nodded as two tears spilled from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Even his logic mode couldn’t allay his fear that his female would die before he even knew her name. He was trembling, on the verge of hyperventilating.
In his eighty years fighting the Mesaarkans he had killed thousands, seen thousands of humans die. Nothing had ever affected him like this, not even when he was captured and tortured by the Mesaarkans. He learned ways to inflict pain on a human being he had never thought of before. By the time Vyken Dark’s team had found him, Jolt had been ready to welcome death.
It had taken a few weeks to recover fully, but he did with only a few scars to show for it. Jolt would endure it all again if it saved his female, his hope for the future, his dream to know love and make offspring. She just had to live!
Jolt watched anxiously while Knox ran a scan on the woman. “We can move her onto the stretcher,” Knox told him. “She is badly damaged, but we can save her.”
Jolt almost sank to his knees in relief when Knox said those fantastic four words: “We can save her.”
Together they lifted her onto the stretcher, and it took her to the transport. Torn between staying with his newly discovered, injured female and going after the scum that nearly killed her, he finally climbed into the troop carrier and sat with her while Knox examined her.
“I want the DNA signatures of every one of the human refuse who defiled my female.”
“She is your female?”Knox looked at him incredulously.
