The Forgotten Four Read online

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  From the simmering anger he had detected in everyone after Manuta had revealed the plan to fetch the Danu to the colony, Kiel had assumed that everyone would be in agreement with the decision to overrule Manuta's orders. In a sense he had correctly assessed the situation. To a man, they refused to accept that they had become expendable, undesirable. What he had not anticipated was that they would be so divided in their desires beyond that and yet he found that to be the case when he had met with the captains of the platoons to discuss the decision. Aeyn and Dex were the first to meet him at the river to announce the decision of their companies and the first inkling he had of just how divided they were in their opinions beyond that.

  "My men are unanimous in their decision to refuse Manuta's orders," Aeyn announced grimly. "We could not agree on anything else, however. They consider themselves Danu and therefore that the colony is ours and that Manuta is defective in its reasoning to consider replacing us with natural born Danu when there is no difference to their mind. We have the same DNA as the parent race. We need only Danu females to produce. Those of that line of thinking consider it imperative to find the home world as Manuta directed us, but only to secure the females we want.

  "Some do not see that as necessary at all. They suggest that we reprogram Manuta to produce the females so that they will be as we are, stronger than the parent race. We have a mapping of 'a' female, even if she is not Danu. We have the DNA of our race. They see no reason why we cannot use the data Manuta gathered from Captain Danielle to produce cyborgs like us, who will accept us without question because we are the same.

  "The others disagree with that because they want natural born females and consider that any natural born female is more desirable than artificially produced females that are part machine because they agree with Manuta that it is less than ideal that we are only part Danu. They also think that crossbreeding our species with the human species might bring in desirable traits and strengthen our race. They point out that interbreeding, over time, weakens the strain due to an increasing number of undesirable genetic traits and that the Danu had bred indiscriminately for far too many generations before they had attained the wisdom to understand what they had done. Manuta, itself, pointed that out, that it had had to carefully analyze the DNA strands entrusted to it to eliminate undesirable traits.

  "The only other thing that they are at least mostly in agreement on is that they do not want to destroy Manuta or even radically change its programming-except for those who do want to change Manuta's programming so that it will not interfere with their plans to find mates and those who want Manuta to produce mates for them," he finished in disgust.

  Irritation flickered through Kiel, but he was not surprised after Aeyn's report to discover that Dex had encountered a similar division among his own men. "I believe I should add that they are closer to coming to blows over their differences than I have ever known them to be. Even if we are all agreed to rebel against Manuta's primary directive, we may not be able to prevent battles from erupting between the men and that will destroy our chances of carrying this off. Manuta will be warned and will take measures to prevent a complete breakdown in authority."

  Kiel paced the bank while he digested the information he had gotten. "Then we cannot afford to wait any longer," he finally said decisively. "We must disable Manuta immediately. Once we are secure in the knowledge that Manuta cannot circumvent any decision we make, then we can decide where to go from there. Make certain that everyone understands that our only intention at this point is to disable Manuta. To be frank, I am not comfortable with the notion of destroying Manuta myself. In my mind, I know it is nothing but a machine, but it is also our creator. Despite my own desires to take a mate and produce off-spring, I feel a loyalty to Manuta that I cannot entirely dismiss."