Only a few minutes into the battle, Jolt’s reinforcements came over the rise, nearly all 500 of the Farringay cyborgs in full battle armor. As they came into the foray, very few of the armor piercers hit their targets. When a shielded hovercraft rose into the air a couple city blocks back from the fighting, Berke’s gangers started pulling back as it jetted away.
More fliers attempted to flee and Jolt relayed orders to shoot them down. Shortly after that, Jolt collapsed from blood loss. The armor piercers had done more damage than his nanites could repair quickly enough to keep him on his feet. The painkillers and stimulants kept him in the fight when he should have laid low.
Axel had some of the newbies pick Jolt and load him into his flier. The armor slowed the penetration of the projectiles, but they still caused a lot of damage. Both shells barely missed doing lethal harm. The newbies took him back to base for Knox to oversee his recovery.
Meanwhile, Jolt’s second in command knew what to do. He mobilized all the teams to root out the gangers. If the damned overlord wanted to do things the hard way they could do that. Berke’s territory covered about six full city blocks.
Jolt had been willing to let the first attack on his men go as a misunderstanding. This time, Berke had sealed his fate.
After consulting with Commander Dark, he directed his companies to clear every building of people then demolish every one of them. He specifically included Berke’s fancy mansion. The man was in a position to help the street people, but he let them believe he was helping them while exploiting them for his own gain.
Starting a war with the cyborgs trying to build a starport was a big mistake. He may have escaped the cyborgs Mr. Berke would soon learn not to mess with cyborgs. Over the next few hours, a few hundred cyborgs went from building to building. They killed or captured the armed gangers and herded out the pleasure slaves, then raised the buildings with smart demolition grenades. It turned out that Berke’s business involved the production of an elite line of euphoria drugs that were smuggled off-world.
Jolt later speculated that was why Berke’s men attacked. It was a stupid move by the overlord because Jolt was seconds from loading up his men and heading back to base. After the first few blasts, Berke escaped in a hover flier with unknown persons. Rather than go after him, Jolt kept his men on site rounding up the gangers still alive and reassuring the slaves from the pleasure house and the drug-making facility.
Knox hooked up a blood transfusion that was infused with additional nanocybots to repair Jolt’s injuries. His continued fighting after the injuries caused further damage and blood loss at a faster rate than the nanites could repair. Thus, they had shut him down. Jolt would be out of commission for at least twenty-four hours.
He wouldn’t be going back to the Enclave that night as he planned. Knox decided he should com Iris to let her know so she wouldn’t worry, but he could only leave her a vid-mail because she didn’t answer….
Chapter Twelve
“Jolt!” Iris cried, stopping in the Level One corridor on her way to the mess hall for second meal.
“Iris, what is it?” Danya had been waiting outside the mess hall for her new friend to join her for the meal.
Iris put her hand against the glossy beige wall to steady herself as she suddenly felt weakness surge through her body. “They shot him! He is in horrible pain.”
Tears streamed down her face in anguish. All though she couldn’t actually feel his pain, she could feel his initial distress. She breathed in short gasps for several seconds until she sensed his relief from the pain meds. “Oh, my God!” she rasped as Danya came to her side and put an arm around her. “I thought he was going to die.”
“You can feel what happened to him from here?” Danya asked incredulously.
“Yes, I guess because he is my male.” Iris murmured.
“Come on, let's go to the mess, and I will get you some tea before we eat,” Danya said, gently urging her to walk with her to the mess hall. She steered Iris to a far corner table and had her sit down while she went to the hot beverage dispenser for some tea for each of them.
“He’s going to be all right,” Iris said, brushing the tears off her face with her fingers. “That medicine Teag gave me is letting me block out the others, but not Jolt. …And I don’t want to block him. I wish I could go to him.”
“I know,” Danya told her. “I would feel the same about Vyken. But his men will see to him, and the nanites will heal him.”
“Vyken is in New Chicago. I can com him and ask for transport to Farringay,” Danya offered.
“Thank you, but no. He needs me to be safe here while they are going after the gangers and rescuing Berke’s slaves.”
Just then, Danya’s com bleeped, and she picked up the call immediately when she saw it was Enclave Administrator Gwen Fielder calling. “Yes, Gwen?”
“Axel Rex just called, and they are sending us an additional one-hundred-twenty-three souls,” she said. “Can you supervise the intake? Then I need to call Commander Dark to have him deal with the gangers that surrendered. I don’t want to mix them with the general population until we can evaluate them to make sure we can trust them.”
“How soon will they arrive? Iris and I were just sitting down for second meal.”
“Go ahead with your meal. Axel gave us a couple hours lead time. Meanwhile, they are setting up temporary shelters for them,” Gwen told her. “We need something more secure for the gangers though.”
“Vyken can figure something out,” Danya responded.
“Thank you, Danya. Enjoy your meal. We will talk later.”
Iris frowned as Danya returned her tablet to her pocket. Even with the medication, she was starting to feel the buzzing in her head again. There were very few people in the mess hall beside Danya and Iris. Danya had deliberately picked a time that most residents had finished second meal.
“What’s wrong, Iris? I thought you said that Jolt will be okay?”
