take.” She pushed the tray aside, done with her meal. “They wanted pilots to go out looking for new planets farther than we had previously explored.”
Iron sat on the bed a few feet from her. “When they created us they thought we would be living robots with blank minds. They determined we wouldn’t have souls but they were wrong. We have emotions and think for ourselves.” He paused. “They implanted chips in our heads, trying to stop those functions but we were able to work around them to reestablish the parts of our brains they tried to block us from. We just hid it better. Once we realized they were sending us on death missions, to spend our lives aboard shuttles designed to never return to Earth but instead to send data back to them, we rebelled by demanding human status. We wanted rights that other humans had. We tried to do it by following their laws. We found council that spoke on our behalf but we were deemed property, not fit to have rights or the ability to say no to their orders.”
Sympathy welled inside Dawn as she reached out to touch him. “They were wrong to do that. You’re living beings and hell, other than the color of your skin, you are human.”
The tense expression on his features softened. He moved his hand, placing it over hers to curl around it. “We are in agreement there. We might have genetic enhancements and have technology added to our bodies but we are human on every basic level.”
“So Earth Government turned down your requests because you were free labor they didn’t want to give up.”
A firm nod of his head indicated he agreed with Dawn’s blunt statement. “They mandated we follow orders or we would be terminated. We went on strike, refusing to take our shifts or attend our classes. They arrested us and took us to detention centers. What they didn’t factor in was that they’d given some of us the ability to send and receive data. Though we were confined to holding cells in small numbers, they took us to the same holding facility.”
“You could silently communicate with each other.”
“Yes.” He paused. “They deemed their cyborg project a huge failure and realized we posed a threat since we were not only great pilots but they’d made our bodies much stronger and durable for long-term space travel, making us physically superior if we chose to declare war on them. From what some of us overheard from guards and the data streams we were able to pick up, we were able to figure out that they were going to mass execute all cyborgs within weeks.”
“Oh my God,” Dawn whispered. “All of you? Not just the ones they thought would be trouble to them?”
“All of us. They were trying to decide if they should gas us in our cells or poison our food. There was a hot debate going on about it from the coms we were able to pick up that were transmitted.”
“Son of a bitch.” Dawn inched closer to him. “So you escaped.”
“We did. They’d given us access to a lot of the shuttles for training purposes but they failed to revoke our access after they locked us up. It was an oversight on their part that helped us. We revolted in unison since we were able to link to enough of our kind that they could coordinate with others in their holding cells. We’d been docile before that day so they weren’t prepared for our attack.”
“You stole their shuttles.”
He nodded. “We filled them and lifted off the planet. Some of us had trained on the Moonslip , the Georgeton , and the Barclay so we had interaction with some of their crews. We contacted them, pretending that we’d been cleared for duty and they allowed us to dock without raising alarms. From there we took over the ships, put the humans in emergency pods to return to Earth since we didn’t want to kill unless we had to. By then Earth Government realized what had happened and were scrambling defensive fighters from the surface to attack the starships.”
“Shit.”
“We had to leave a lot of our kind
Iron sat on the bed a few feet from her. “When they created us they thought we would be living robots with blank minds. They determined we wouldn’t have souls but they were wrong. We have emotions and think for ourselves.” He paused. “They implanted chips in our heads, trying to stop those functions but we were able to work around them to reestablish the parts of our brains they tried to block us from. We just hid it better. Once we realized they were sending us on death missions, to spend our lives aboard shuttles designed to never return to Earth but instead to send data back to them, we rebelled by demanding human status. We wanted rights that other humans had. We tried to do it by following their laws. We found council that spoke on our behalf but we were deemed property, not fit to have rights or the ability to say no to their orders.”
Sympathy welled inside Dawn as she reached out to touch him. “They were wrong to do that. You’re living beings and hell, other than the color of your skin, you are human.”
The tense expression on his features softened. He moved his hand, placing it over hers to curl around it. “We are in agreement there. We might have genetic enhancements and have technology added to our bodies but we are human on every basic level.”
“So Earth Government turned down your requests because you were free labor they didn’t want to give up.”
A firm nod of his head indicated he agreed with Dawn’s blunt statement. “They mandated we follow orders or we would be terminated. We went on strike, refusing to take our shifts or attend our classes. They arrested us and took us to detention centers. What they didn’t factor in was that they’d given some of us the ability to send and receive data. Though we were confined to holding cells in small numbers, they took us to the same holding facility.”
“You could silently communicate with each other.”
“Yes.” He paused. “They deemed their cyborg project a huge failure and realized we posed a threat since we were not only great pilots but they’d made our bodies much stronger and durable for long-term space travel, making us physically superior if we chose to declare war on them. From what some of us overheard from guards and the data streams we were able to pick up, we were able to figure out that they were going to mass execute all cyborgs within weeks.”
“Oh my God,” Dawn whispered. “All of you? Not just the ones they thought would be trouble to them?”
“All of us. They were trying to decide if they should gas us in our cells or poison our food. There was a hot debate going on about it from the coms we were able to pick up that were transmitted.”
“Son of a bitch.” Dawn inched closer to him. “So you escaped.”
“We did. They’d given us access to a lot of the shuttles for training purposes but they failed to revoke our access after they locked us up. It was an oversight on their part that helped us. We revolted in unison since we were able to link to enough of our kind that they could coordinate with others in their holding cells. We’d been docile before that day so they weren’t prepared for our attack.”
“You stole their shuttles.”
He nodded. “We filled them and lifted off the planet. Some of us had trained on the Moonslip , the Georgeton , and the Barclay so we had interaction with some of their crews. We contacted them, pretending that we’d been cleared for duty and they allowed us to dock without raising alarms. From there we took over the ships, put the humans in emergency pods to return to Earth since we didn’t want to kill unless we had to. By then Earth Government realized what had happened and were scrambling defensive fighters from the surface to attack the starships.”
“Shit.”
“We had to leave a lot of our kind
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