The Cyber Chronicles VII - Sabre (23 page)

"Energy
burst," he muttered.

A surge of
strength suffused him as the cyber dumped adrenalin into his
system. His bio-status shot up to forty-two per cent, and he
wrenched his left arm free. Rising to his feet, he punched Dellon
in the face. The Prince crashed to the floor, and soldiers boiled
into the throne room, surrounding Sabre. He recognised some of them
from the dungeons, and knew he could relax. They were Tassin's men.
The energy burst was used up, and his bio-status plummeted to
thirty-five per cent. Sabre fell to his knees and sank back on his
haunches, his head bowed. He swayed, then keeled over on his
back.

Tassin ran
towards Sabre, Tarl overtaking her at a spritely hobble, muttering
curses. Her men went over to disarm the three swaying knights.
Tassin fell to her knees in the blood as Tarl felt for the pulse in
the cyber's neck, his brows knotted.

"His
heartbeat's still over two hundred. He must have lost a lot of
blood." He peered at the brow band. "He's unconscious, and probably
in the red."

Tassin gazed
at Sabre's peaceful, blood-splattered face. Blood oozed from cuts
on his arms, legs and neck, and his armour was sliced and dented.
Tarl shouted for bandages, and a soldier ran out. Tassin glanced
around at the carnage in her throne room. Her eyes flinched from
the sprays of blood on the walls and hangings. Crimson pools spread
across the floor, and armour-clad bodies lay sprawled in them.

She counted
the corpses. "He defeated twenty-three knights."

Tarl looked at
her. "Something must have happened. He shouldn't be in this
state."

"Dellon tried
to cut his head off."

The ex-cyber
tech chuckled. "That was pretty dumb of him."

"The sword...
bounced off."

Tarl nodded
and lifted Sabre, revealing a deep, oozing cut on the back of his
neck. A gleam of gold winked through the blood in it. "You can't
behead a cyber."

"Will he be
all right?"

"Sure, he just
needs a lot of stitches and rest. I wish I had a drip and some
medications, but he'll recover without them. He won't be of any use
to you for a while, though."

"I don't care
about that," Tassin said. "The castle is taken. He will not have to
fight again."

Tarl examined
Sabre's shoulder, probed the joint and lifted his arm to rotate it.
"That's what the problem was. He's broken his shoulder."

"He was
fighting with only one arm?"

"Yeah. I don't
know for how long, though."

Tassin rose to
her feet and called her captain, ordering a stretcher. The soldier
returned with bandages, and Tarl bound Sabre's wounds before the
cyber was carried to a bedchamber, Tarl limping beside him.

The Queen
turned to her captain. “Send messengers to my generals in Torrian's
army, commanding them to turn against the King and fight on
Sharmian's side. Also, send messengers to all of my loyal lords and
ask for soldiers to defend my castle.”

The captain
bowed and ran off, shouting at his men. Tassin trotted after the
stretcher, catching up as they lifted Sabre onto a sumptuous
four-poster bed in one of the more luxurious bedchambers.

The soldiers
left, and Tassin perched on the edge of the bed to gaze at Sabre
while Tarl continued his examination.

"How is he
doing?"

Tarl shot her
an amused glance. "Much the same as he was five minutes ago. He's
in shock, and the cyber's compensating. Right now it's dumping
blood from his liver and scrubbing adrenalin from his system to
slow his heart. That will cause his blood pressure to drop, but it
will also slow the drain on his resources. When it's done all it
can, I think it'll shut down."

She eyed the
flashing control unit. Most of the lights were red. "It did once
before, when he was still enslaved by it. He was in a terrible
fight, and afterwards all the lights went off for more than a
week."

"Yeah, well,
this time he'll wake up when he's ready, not when that damned thing
decides the host has recovered sufficiently to be a useful tool
again."

"You're sure
he's going to be all right?"

Tarl nodded,
frowning. "I wish I had the equipment to monitor him, though, and
the drugs to speed up his healing. His shoulder might be
permanently damaged without regeneration agents."

"That was his
last battle."

"Still, when
Fairen comes to visit I'm going to ask him for a few things. Sabre
won't want to have a shoulder that's stiff and aches for the rest
of his life, will he?"

She shook her
head. "You must fix it."

"I will." He
glanced at her, his fingers on Sabre's pulse. "How goes your
war?"

She sighed. "I
have sent messages. Now it just remains to be seen who will obey my
orders."

****

Sabre drifted
back to consciousness, becoming aware that he lay on a soft bed,
sheets covering him. His shoulder ached, and tingles of pain came
from his arms and thighs. His head pounded and his neck throbbed.
He consulted the cyber's data, which informed him that his
bio-status was at forty-nine per cent. An amber warning light
flashed, indicating dehydration. His tongue was stuck to the roof
of his mouth, and he swallowed, grimacing as he tasted bile.

Opening his
eyes, he stared at the swathes of rich blue cloth above him,
letting his gaze drift down to the carved wooden posts that held it
up, then over to a hunched form beside his bed. Tarl sat in a
cushioned chair with his chin sunk on his chest, his eyes closed.
He shifted, and a soft snore escaped him. Late afternoon sunlight
poured in through the windows of a sumptuous bed chamber, gilding
ornate carved furniture and thick woollen rugs. Gold-framed
portraits and landscapes hung on the grey stone walls, and a breeze
swayed the heavy blue velvet curtains that framed the tall
diamond-paned windows.

"Tarl." It
emerged as a whisper, and Sabre coughed, trying to summon some spit
into his mouth. "Tarl."

The cyber
tech's eyes opened, then his head jerked up and he winced, rubbing
his neck. He glanced at Sabre and smiled. "You're awake."

"No kidding. I
need some water."

Tarl poured a
cup full, and Sabre pushed himself up against the mound of cushions
behind him, taking it from Tarl when he would have held it to the
cyber's lips.

"I don't need
you to damn well feed me, you moron."

"Bud, you lost
a hell of a lot of blood."

Sabre drained
the cup and held it out. "You don't say? More. Where's Tassin?"

Tarl refilled
the cup. "Attending to affairs of state. Seems she's going to be
busy for a while, sorting out Torrian's mess."

"And
Torrian?"

"She sent a
message to her generals in his army. Won’t be long before he’s
defeated and captured, then Sharmian will bring him here in
chains."

"That should
be good."

The ex-tech
leant closer, his eyes on the brow band. "How do you feel?"

"Forty-nine
per cent."

"That's not
what I asked."

"But it's what
you wanted to know."

Tarl sighed.
"A simple 'fine', or 'okay' would have done."

"How about
'shitty'?"

"That will
do."

Sabre glanced
down at the cast on his shoulder and right arm, which was strapped
to his chest. "You like tying me up, don't you?"

"You have a
broken shoulder, bud."

"Ah, I thought
it felt a bit funny."

"A bit
funny?"

"Yeah, it
didn't work too well for the second half of the fight."

Tarl shook his
head. "What happened?"

"A
miscalculation." Sabre drained the cup and held it out again.

Tarl refilled
it. "What happened?"

"I did a
wall-walk with a backflip and hit an overhead cable."

"And you
landed on your shoulder."

"Yeah, and my
head, but that bounced."

Tarl snorted
and chuckled.

Sabre sipped
the water. "How bad is it?"

"Hard to tell
without x-rays, but pretty bad, I reckon."

"I bet you can
fix it with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers."

"No, I would
need regeneration drugs and monitoring equipment."

"Right." Sabre
held out the empty cup once more. "I'll ask Fairen to drop some
off."

Tarl refilled
the cup. "That would be great."

"I’m
kidding."

"I'm not.
Without the drugs, you may have permanent damage, scarring and a
constant ache there, as well as loss of movement and strength. You
may even lose some hand function."

"I'm not going
to bug Fairen. Besides, I'm done with fighting."

"Fairen
wouldn't mind, and you won't like being a cripple."

Sabre sipped
the water. "Okay, I'll ask him."

"Good." Tarl
glanced at the brow band again. "The cyber shut down for six days;
had me a bit worried. It rebooted yesterday, but it didn't try to
take over again, did it?"

"Nope. Those
shiny girls fixed it good. So I've been out for a week?"

"Yeah. You
needed the rest."

"No wonder I'm
so damned thirsty."

"If I'd had a
drip...."

Sabre sighed.
"You can bring me some painkillers. I have one hell of a
headache."

"Right." Tarl
left, returning a minute later with two pills from the cyber's
medical kit. Sabre took them, then handed him the empty cup and
slid down in the bed, closing his eyes.

"Thanks. Now
you can piss off and let me get some sleep. The cyber flashes a
warning light when you're around. Cyber techs set off all my
alarms."

"Bullshit."

Sabre
smiled.

When Sabre
woke again, the room was dark and he was alone, and he used the
bracelet to send a brief message to Fairen.

The cyber’s
chronometer told him it was almost midday, local time, when Tarl
woke him up to inform him that a pile of equipment had materialised
in a field close to the castle during the night. A squad of
soldiers had hauled it into one of the disused rooms, where the
ex-cyber tech had spent three hours setting it up. Tarl led him to
the freshly scrubbed room, where a faint scent of antiseptic hung
in the air. A sheet of plasfoam covered the floor, and a squat
machine he recognised as a control unit interface and scanner stood
beside a modern, moulded plastic bench-like bed. A trolley held an
assortment of syringes, drugs and instruments, and five floating
globes provided light. Sabre lay down, and Tarl hooked up his
equipment, totally engrossed.

Sabre watched
him hum around the room, adjust cables and plug equipment into a
neosin power pack by the wall.

"Back in your
element, aren't you, bud? Another cyber to fix."

Tarl
approached the bed, a cable in one hand. "I could always leave you
a cripple."

"Nah, you'd
never do that. Can't stand to see high-tech machinery damaged, can
you?"

Tarl sat on
the stool beside the bed, putting down the cable. "If high-tech
machinery was all you were, I'd shut you down and stuff you in a
damned cupboard, you annoying bastard. And you want to be fixed,
otherwise you wouldn't have asked Fairen to send this stuff."

"You're right,
I do. Why be crippled, when with a few injections and some electric
shocks I can be as good as new?"

Tarl plugged
the end of the cable into the cyber's access port. "Lucky for you.
Pity I can't upload a new personality while I'm at it."

Sabre
chuckled, and Tarl turned to the monitor, tapped some keys and read
the information that scrolled up the screen.

"Okay, well,
you're at fifty-one per cent now -"

"I know
that."

"Right." Tarl
tapped some more keys, and frowned. "Uh oh..."

"What?"

"According to
this, the cyber is registered to Myon Two."

"Yeah, those
bastards changed it."

"Doesn't seem
like a good idea to me."

"So change
it."

Tarl shook his
head. "I can't. I'd need the super user codes for this control
unit."

Sabre frowned.
"Then I'll change it."

Tarl shot him
a surprised look. "Can you do that?"

Sabre closed
his eyes, concentrating on the cyber's database. It appeared in the
darkness of his mind, and he ordered it to purge the data. The
information scrolled up, the registered owner's field now blank. It
scrolled up again, and the control unit's serial number was blank.
It scrolled up once more, and all the control codes and passwords
were gone, leaving the entire registration database empty.

"Wow," Tarl
muttered.

Sabre opened
his eyes. "How's that?"

Tarl stared at
the monitor, which displayed the same information Sabre had just
seen in his mind. "Bloody amazing."

"Now no part
of me belongs to anyone else."

"Great. Let's
get you fixed up then."

Tarl attached
a drip to Sabre's arm and injected it with several drugs, which he
said were vitamins, DNA-activating agents to speed up his healing,
and a mild sedative. Tarl cut away the cast and undid the
strapping, and Sabre closed his eyes while the tech worked. He
opened them again when Tarl swung the arm of a squat instrument
next to his stool over the cyber's shoulder and peered through the
round lens on the end of it.

"Yep, it's
broken all right," he said. "Smashed, in fact. Worse than I
thought. The ball of the joint is snapped off. The barrinium
doesn't extend to the end of it. It's one of the weaknesses R and D
was never able to fix. They would have had to replace the entire
joint, which would have cost too much. The shaft is broken into
three, no, four pieces. You must have fallen on it really
hard."

Sabre stared
at the ceiling. "Not really. I only fell about four metres. It was
just the awkwardness of it, and the angle."