The Cyber Chronicles VIII - Scorpion Lord (2 page)

"Talk to the
cyber, the host is checking out."

"No!" Jorran
jumped up, sending the stool rolling away. He leant over Sabre,
gripped his shoulders and shook him. "Stay with me! Dammit! Shit!"
Jorran pushed himself away and ran a hand through his hair,
scowling.

Sabre shut off the video feed from the control unit and let
himself sink into the sticky blackness that had been his prison
until about six months ago. Before he relinquished control, he
purged the registration database of Tassin’s name, thereby removing
all evidence that she had anything to do with him that might be
used to accuse her of meddling with a cyber’s programming. The
darkness did not frighten him now, for he could escape it whenever
he chose. It had become a refuge, a way to escape any situation he
could not handle, and now the torturers. He could have just
switched the control unit's lights to an in-control configuration,
but Jorran might be able to detect that he was still in control. So
he handed all control back to the cyber and retreated into the
deepest pit in his mind, where the bitter voice that always mocked
him dwelt.
Cyborg
. It whispered now, since he chose to join it in the cold
abyss. He sensed the control unit re-establishing its functions,
cutting off his motor control and sensory stimuli. This time he was
glad of it, and burrowed deeper into the blackness, pulling it over
himself like a dark blanket.

"Dammit!"
Jorran glared down at the cyber as the lights on the brow band
switched to a normal configuration, the seven control lights on the
right hand side turning green one by one. The cyber's eyes glazed
and drooped as all expression drained from his face. His mouth
opened, and a toneless voice issued from it.

"Requesting
owner identity."

Jorran
frowned. "Identity?"

"Correct.
Registration database has been purged."

"Cyber, what's
the host status?"

"Seventy-three
per cent."

"Not his
bio-status. Are you in complete control?"

"Unit is
functional. Requesting owner identity."

Jorran swore,
rubbing the back of his neck, where an ache developed. "Your owner
is Myon Two."

"Information
input. No valid codes or passwords. What is this unit's serial
number?"

"Um..." Jorran
turned to the table beside him and picked up an infrared reader,
then gripped the brow band and turned the cyber's head to the side.
Pressing the reader to the invisible bar code tattooed on the back
of the cyber's scalp, he pushed the button, sending the information
to his console and from there to the control unit via the link
cable.

"Serial number
input. Designate codes."

Jorran rattled
off a string of random words, still rubbing his neck.

"Codes
accepted. Input voice imprint of command privilege personnel."

Jorran named
himself as primary command privilege holder, then sat down, staring
at the cyber. Five minutes later, the door opened and the head of
research and development strode in, looking angry. Jorran’s dislike
of the bald, hazel-eyed Parvan ran deep, not least because he was a
control freak and egomaniac who actually thought his hatchet nose
and sunken eyes were attractive, and always wore far too much musky
cologne. It did not surprise Jorran that Parvan had no wife or
girlfriend, even though he was constantly going on dates; or at
least, he claimed to be. Not that Jorran had much of a social life,
but then, he was too busy.

"What
happened?" Parvan demanded.

Jorran
gestured to the cyber. "He put himself back under cyber
control."

"How?"

"I didn't get
a chance to ask him. He controlled it, and now he's put it in
charge."

"What about
the experiments?"

Jorran
shrugged. "I can still run all the physical ones."

"Good. I doubt
there was much to be learnt from his mind, anyway."

"Oh, I think
it would have been very interesting to study his psyche."

"You're sure
he's not faking it?"

Jorran glanced
at the image on the brain scanner. "Yeah, he's under cyber
control."

"Good. Then we
can send him to Myon Two. He's a prototype. We'll use him to market
the new breed."

Jorran swung
around. "You can't do that. He can free himself whenever he wants,
and we don’t have his override."

"Find his
codes and make an override for him. We'll assign a cyber to guard
him."

"There's a
chance Overlord Fairen will find out about his abduction and come
looking for him."

"How? The
bracelet is well hidden, and the people who took him to Omega Five
are trapped there."

Jorran shook
his head. "It's too risky. Overlord Fairen might go there to check
on him."

"We need him
for marketing. We'll get a lot more orders if we have a prototype
to show clients. Even with the new DNA spliced in with a
retrovirus, the new cybers won't be ready for two years."

"We don't even
know if we can splice the DNA correctly yet."

"Then that's
what you should be working on, not wasting your time on chit chat
with a damned host. Make him an override, do the physical tests and
bring me the results when you're done."

"Yes, sir."
Jorran glared at his boss' back as the department head left, then
turned to gaze down at the cyber again.

****

Tassin scowled
at Tarl. "What are you saying?"

The
middle-aged ex-cyber tech ran a hand over his thick head of dark
brown hair, his pale blue eyes worried in his craggy, care worn
face. It had taken him months to earn Sabre’s trust, but now he was
the cyber’s closest friend and ally. He had made it his mission to
care for the cyber with the skills he had learnt as a host repair
tech on Myon Two, a position he had quit when he had discovered
that hosts suffered. Before leaving Cybercorp, he had destroyed a
lot of valuable equipment, earning himself a death sentence. When
she and Sabre had met him on Charon Six, he had favoured a rather
disreputable smuggler’s garb, but now he wore well-cut but
comfortable black jeans and a grey T-shirt under a dark blue
flannel shirt, since the lab was a bit nippy.

"He didn't
leave of his own accord,” he said. “He's not taking a sabbatical on
a distant mountain top, he was abducted."

"How do you
know that?"

"I had a look
in his room, particularly on the wall outside his window. Someone
climbed up that wall. You can see the scratches. It's not like him
to disappear in the middle of the night, and he's been gone for two
days now. You're sure you didn't see or hear anything?"

Tassin shook
her head. "How could someone abduct a cyber?"

"Shoot him
with a tranquiliser dart from the window, then carry him off. The
scanners can't penetrate stone, so the cyber wouldn't have warned
him."

"A
tranquiliser?"

"Yeah. Cybers
are immune to most poisons and incapacitating drugs, but not all.
There's one in particular that Myon Two uses, called endronate.
They couldn't make cybers immune to it, so they bought the patent
for its production and banned its use by anyone else. Only Myon Two
produces it now, because it incapacitates a cyber in less than two
seconds if it's injected into the jugular. It kills a normal human
in even less time. I think they've got him, and if they do we've
got to find him."

"How?" Tassin
swung to gaze out of the window. "We don't have a ship. And if this
happened, why hasn't Fairen rescued him yet?"

"I don't
know... unless..."

"What?"

"If Myon Two
had taken the bracelet, Fairen would have noticed that the locator
beacon had moved, and gone to investigate... Well, in theory. Or if
they had broken it, he would have come to see why the beacon had
stopped. But if they took the bracelet off and hid it somewhere,
but left it switched on, Fairen wouldn't know anything had happened
to him."

"That bracelet
can't be removed, and if it was cut it would set off the distress
signal."

Tarl nodded.
"Then they must have found a way to unlock it. Myon Two are nothing
if not resourceful. Maybe Ramadaus helped them. I don't know, but
I'm sure he was kidnapped."

"So what do we
do?"

"Well, you're
right; we're stuck here without a ship. But if I can find the
bracelet, I can trigger the distress signal."

"I'll dispatch
men to start searching immediately," she said.

"Okay, good.
I'm going to see if I can rig something to pick up the beacon. I'll
use the equipment Fairen sent. I'm sure I can make some sort of
receiver out of the parts. We know it's a high frequency
sideband."

She turned to
face him, her heart filled with dread. "Please hurry. God only
knows what they're doing to him."

"I know. I
will."

Tarl left, and
Tassin turned to stare out of the window again, her eyes blind to
the budding spring shoots on the trees outside and the bright
sunshine that bathed the peaceful land. When Sabre had vanished two
days ago, she had not been unduly alarmed, thinking he had gone out
for an early walk. He had not returned that night, however, and she
had started to worry, but told herself that he was merely camping
out perhaps, and needed some time alone.

When there was
still no sign of him the next day, she had dispatched search
parties, but continued to hope that he was only spending some time
alone with his thoughts. This morning her worry had grown further,
for he would not have stayed away for so long without telling her.
He would know she would be worried. Then again, who, or what, could
harm a cyber? For two days she had comforted herself with the
knowledge that he was bound to be safe, now she was no longer so
sure.

If Tarl was
right, Sabre was in grave danger, and undoubtedly suffering at the
hands of sadistic Cybercorp technicians. The thought made her bile
rise, and she gulped. He had warned her that this would happen, but
she had not wanted to believe him. Would he never know peace? Was
her dream of a happy, carefree life with him just a fantasy? How
long before Tarl or her men found the bracelet, and then what?
Would Myon Two kill him rather than let an Overlord catch them with
him?

The questions made her head ache, and she rubbed her brow.
There were simply no answers to be gained from pointless pondering.
There was still a chance he was off wandering somewhere, unaware
that she was going out of her mind with worry. She clung to the
hope that at any moment he would stroll into the castle. She missed
his husky laughter and gentle teasing, the way his silver-grey eyes
made her shiver and his shy hugs. The legacy of Myon Two’s torture
was written in the hair-fine scars on his pale golden skin, caused
by the cruel operations that had strengthened his bones with metal.
They ran along the sides of his torso and neck, down his arms,
legs, cheekbones and forehead to mid-way down his narrow nose, and
even as lines of white in his cropped dark blond hair. The black
crystals embedded in the golden-hued brow band that had once
enslaved him were usually filled with tiny multi-coloured
lights.
It curved around his brow, no more
than three centimetres wide and fifteen centimetres long, its
rounded ends not quite reaching his hairline.
She blinked, rubbing her stinging eyes. She did not want to
think about what the torturers on Myon Two would do to him if they
had taken him.

****

Parvan glanced
up as his chief cyber tech placed a vidrecorder on his
crystal-topped carved desk and flopped into the pseudo-leather
chair that faced it. The department head had never liked Jorran,
whom he thought was an egomaniac and a bit of a sociopath. Most of
all, he disliked having the sweaty little man in his plush,
sweet-scented office. Parvan treasured the aroma of new upholstery,
and renewed his furnishings regularly to ensure his office always
smelt new.

Jade-framed
masterpieces graced the patterned, pale blue walls, complementing
the woven grey blarri-hair curtains that framed massive windows
with a vista of the glittering glass and metal city. Parvan's was
one of the few offices that had a view, and he made the most of it,
with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on the far wall to reflect it. He
switched off a scrolling vidreport and steepled his hands.

"Well?"

"It's all in
my report."

"Summarise."

"He's above
normal,” Jorran said. “All his specs are at least ten per cent
better than any other A-grade ever tested. Of course, you have to
remember that he's Dorilan's finest. His last, perfect cyber,
hand-picked at birth and raised to be better than all the rest. He
was slightly above average before, now he's exceptional."

"That's
excellent news. You're ready to ship him to Myon Two, then?"

"If you're
prepared to risk it, and they are, too."

Parvan nodded.
"They are. No sign of trouble with him?"

"No, nothing
out of the ordinary."

"Good, put him
in a casket and send him to Myon Two. They already have clients
eager to see the new prototype. You'll go, too, so you can continue
your research into the retrograde DNA splicing, and oversee the
introduction of his DNA into the generation programme."

"Right."
Jorran rose and left the office.

Seven days
later, Jorran stepped out of a company shuttle into the cool, muggy
air of Myon Two, glancing up at the perpetual cloud cover. Fifteen
layers of cross-lane air-car traffic whizzed past overhead, from
brightly coloured fun-cars on the top layers to heavy transports at
the bottom. Ahead of him, the sweeping, glass and steel edifice
that was Cybercorp's head office towered, the name proudly
displayed in four-metre-high silver letters halfway up it. Jorran
had visited head office several times, but still recalled his first
trip here, and how the glittering richness and awe inspiring
buildings had intimidated him. This was an empire built on advanced
technology and innovation, and its design reflected that.