Ranvir remained in his chair. He wasn’t surprised by the outraged response and raised his hands. “Hear me out.”
“I’m not severing the link with my pod members,” Pike growled. “They’ll think I died.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Ranvir told them. “What I’m proposing is that we form a completely separate pod. It would mean we wouldn’t have to rely on a tracking program for locations. We would be able to communicate with one another silently.”
“That isn’t possible,” Ganesha told him. “All links must be severed before a new pod can be formed.”
“No, they don’t,” Ranvir countered. “It’s highly recommended you do because you don’t want an old pod member contacting you in the middle of an op, but it can’t be forced.”
“How do you know that?” Tane demanded.
“Because I was a member of Nas’s pod, Talyani’s half-brother, until I was promoted up and out to command my own pod.”
“You never severed the link?” Pike gave him a disbelieving look.
“I did with everyone but Nas. We’d served together before becoming cyborgs, under Nas’s father until he was killed.”
“And it hasn’t interfered with any of your ops?” Tane wanted to know.
“No. We only used it when we knew the other was on base.”
“How did you accomplish this?” Ganesha asked, his brows drawing together.
“The same way we created the link with our original pod. By creating a firewall around a section in the communications area of our cybernetic brain, then granting our pod members access to it. There is no crossover between areas, so no personal or sensitive information is revealed.”
“I need to think about this,” Ganesha muttered.
“I expected nothing less, but consider this. Cyborg pods have always had a higher survival rate than lone cyborgs. It’s why the military insisted we form them. We need to do this, or we may not survive long enough to find our lost pod members.”