Prologue

Steele

I am Steele Nova, a cyborg made to fight a war that lasted a hundred years, but after I was created, I remained in stasis until it was over, and Commander Vyken Dark awakened me. Earth lay in ruin, and the population was decimated.

Instead of fighting a war, I awakened to help rebuild civilization in North America. I went wherever Commander Dark sent me and did whatever job was needed. Eventually, I became a protector and a guardian of the world we were rebuilding.

When I arrived in Montana with my Protector team, we were thrust into a serious investigation almost immediately. We barely had time to set up our barracks before we had to start patrolling the mountains in search of a hidden alien star base. Our lieutenant had found a stash of human abductees held at a remote location. He discovered evidence there indicating Mesaarkan involvement.

Lieutenant Shadow Hawk quickly realized this job was far too big for him to handle on his own. He contacted his superior, Blaze Savage, and Cyborg Commander Vyken Dark with what he had discovered. They both agreed with him that it didn't look good.

Commander Dark offered to send him a team of six trained Protectors to back him up in the investigation. Protectors are a contingent of the Enclave Law Enforcement guardians comprised of cyborgs awakened by Commander Dark's team when they returned to Earth. I am one of hundreds trained for this.

That first week, we started patrol soon after we set up our prefab barracks. We searched the rocky mountains in Western Montana daily. I finally found the hidden entrance to the alien starbase cut into the side of a rock-face mountain. The base was so deep into the range no roads had ever led to it. Sending a dozen bee drones to recon, I left the area to search for other entrances. I found the main entrance on the back side of that mountain. Scanning the vicinity around me, I sensed multiple pieces of surveillance equipment.

Worried that they may have already detected my presence, I headed back to Gretchen, reporting my findings as I flew away from the Mesaarkan base. As I retreated, I soon realized a flier was pursuing me. I could only take evasive action since I had no weapons attached to my sky cycle. I flew at top speed over the mountains and valleys, but I couldn't shake my tail.

I called out through the Cyborg Network that I was in trouble and gave my coordinates. Lieutenant Hawk responded that he was closest to intercepting my trajectory. He hovered his sky cycle in mid-air ahead of me while his mate Jenny aimed her ion rifle at the flier chasing me as we approached.

As I blew by with the flier hot on my tail, Shadow's mate fired several shots in succession. I immediately slowed when I heard the explosion behind me. Lieutenant Hawk called me back to help put out the fire from the exploded attack drone. The last thing we needed was to start a wildfire.

"Thanks, lieutenant, thanks, Jenny. That would have been me had you two not been there. That drone was too fast for me to stop, turn, and fire on him with my rifle. However, I did release two dozen bee drones into their base before I was discovered."

As we got data back from the bee drones, we learned that a force of three hundred armed Mesaarkan warriors with advanced weaponry occupied the base. Lieutenant Hawk requested several more teams of protectors to help us free the captives, capture the human collaborators, and send the Mesaarkans off-world.

We used data from the little drones to compile a map of the base's interior. For whatever reason, there was a back door large enough for hovercrafts two drive through. With frequent comings and goings, Lieutenant Hawk believed we could hijack one of the incoming vehicles to get inside.

Lieutenant Hawk didn't want to wait to start the operation. The next day, we went in to rescue the captives and get them to a safe place before we attempted to shut down the Mesaarkan human trafficking enterprise.

We got them out, but things got a little messy. Lieutenant Hawk got shot, and his mate Jenny needed help to get him loaded up and get him out of there. However, as a cyborg, he recovered quickly with a boost from a nanite Bolus to heal him.

No witnesses were left to report back to the Mesaarkans as to what happened to all of their prisoners. A couple of days later, we rescued another group of captives from the human gang working for the Mesaarkans.

Days later, after calling in reinforcements, Lieutenant Shadow Hawk led us on a mission to shut down the Glacier Peak Mesaarkan starbase. Using one of the confiscated hovercrafts, Lieutenant Hawk and his mate Jenny led the first team inside to disable the security systems.

I flew in about fifteen minutes later, with the remaining units alternating confiscated hovercrafts with our sky cycles. Although Lieutenant Hawk's team had disabled the sensors that would automatically set off their alarms, one of the aliens spotted us and manually set it off. So, of course, this couldn't go down easy.

We left our vehicles weapons ready and ran into the main chamber. The skeleton night crew ran into the residential tunnels while the Mesaarkan warriors mobilized. Some of the cyborg teams remained in the command center, while some moved into the hangar to secure the spaceship. They wanted no Mesaarkans left behind when it launched.

We also searched for human collaborators and any captives that may have been held, but the human collaborators were gone. Still, we went from chamber to chamber to make sure we rooted out every Mesaarkan and rescued any humans left.

Warriors fired from the residential tunnels, and the cyborgs took cover in the lab tunnels to return fire. Once the hangar was secured, members from the other team returned to help fortify the command center. The Mesaarkans took many casualties, and the cyborgs took few.

Knowing that they would soon be killed, the remaining warriors surrendered. Under the treaty, the Mesaarkans knew the cyborgs were forbidden to kill them when they yielded. The aliens were herded into the spaceship hangar.

With the warriors under control, the cyborgs went to the residential and lab modules, rousting out the rest of the Mesaarkan personnel. Many of the modules I checked were empty, but outside one, I heard a female human scream. I broke down the door and saw something out of a BDSM nightmare.

As the Mesaarkan turned to reprimand me for interrupting his recreation, I raised my rifle without even thinking and shot him in the head. He was dead before he hit the ground. Then I saw her .