The recon platform had no name, nor did it want one.  It was nothing more than a cluster of passive sensors, a handful of gas jets and a single laser communicator, governed by the most advanced automated systems the human race had been able to produce.  There was no such thing as a true AI, at least not yet, but the controlling systems were capable of reacting to almost anything.  Now, it opened its passive sensors to their full extent – taking the risk of having them blinded – and watched as the invisible projectiles smashed into the alien fleet.

Four smaller alien craft and a carrier were hit at once, all four damaged beyond repair.  The remaining carriers brought up their active sensors and started sweeping space for threats, then opened fire with their point defence.  Lacking any armour or means to evade incoming fire, the remaining projectiles started to vanish, one by one.  The recon platform noted that the aliens took several shots to destroy each projectile, but they were definitely capable of putting out enough firepower to do it.  Unbothered by human emotional reactions, the recon platform observed the destruction of another alien carrier, followed by the loss of dozens of other projectiles.  Hundreds of alien starfighters swarmed free, advancing rapidly outwards to locate and destroy other projectiles.  Behind them, the starships brought up their drives and started to fan out rapidly.

Faithfully, unaware of its impending destruction, the recon platform reported everything to its mothership.

***

Ivan had no doubts.  Like the rest of his team, their emotional reactions had been minimised by the surgeons who had turned them into cyborg commandos.  It was a must, he’d been told when he no longer had the emotional capability to react to what they'd done to him; they didn't dare allow their cyborgs to keep the full range of human emotions.  The horror ordinary humans would feel at losing their genitals and being turned into inhuman monsters was nothing more than a minor notion to the cyborgs.

Hours of drifting through space in an unpowered shuttlecraft didn't bother him either.  Yes, he knew – intellectually – that the alien sensor grids might locate his shuttlecraft and blow it out of space, vaporising it so completely that they wouldn't have a chance to test their capabilities for operating in space without a spacesuit.  But it was merely an abstract concept to him.  They had a mission and they would complete it or die trying.

There was no need to talk.  All six cyborgs were linked together through low-power radio signals, allowing them to share thoughts and concepts without needing to open their mouths.  Indeed, as they’d grown closer and closer together, they had stopped talking to others, apart from when it was strictly necessary.  Ordinary humans, even Russians, feared the cyborgs, they knew.  It wasn't something that bothered them.  The cyborgs existed to serve as front-line commandos, nothing else.  If ordinary humans were scared of them, so much the better.