The Cyber Chronicles - Book I: Queen of Arlin (29 page)

"Well done," he
said. "Now we've got the whole damned army looking for us."

"It worked
though. We are out."

"But for how
long?"

Tassin muttered
under her breath about stupidity and incompetence, and Sabre
gritted his teeth. When the soldiers had disappeared around a
corner, he continued down the alley, towing the puffing Queen. No
sanctuary presented itself, and he toyed with the idea of breaking
into a house. He was unwilling to risk rousing an irate family that
might raise the alarm before he could silence them, however.

The choice was
revoked when torch-bearing soldiers entered the alley, and Sabre
dived into the nearest doorway. He leant against the sturdy door,
which gave slightly, creaking. Tassin tugged at his webbing, and he
shook her off. With a final shove, the bolt gave and the door flew
open. Sabre grabbed it before it banged on the wall, shutting it
behind the Queen. Going over to a window, he peered down the alley
through a gap in the shutters. The soldiers advanced slowly,
searching every doorway and evicting sleeping beggars from them.
Sabre crouched beside the window, waiting for them to pass, and
Tassin panted in the darkness nearby.

He muttered,
"If we'd gone over the wall, they wouldn't have missed us until
morning, by which time we'd have been long gone."

"And I could
have broken a leg, or my head!"

A faint creak
made Sabre spin around. A burly man, dressed in a flannel
nightshirt and armed with a club, descended the staircase at the
back of the room, holding a lamp. With a whispered curse, Sabre
moved into a deeper shadow, hoping the man would see nothing and
return to his warm bed. The Olgaran spotted the torches outside the
window and padded across the room to peer out at the commotion.
Sabre crept away from him, hoping Tassin was well concealed. A
crash of breaking pottery made him wince, and the man swung around,
shining his light on the source of the noise. Tassin crouched
beside a table, a smashed vase on the floor beside her and a look
of guilty horror on her face. The man growled and raised the
club.

Tassin yelled,
"Sabre!"

Sabre sprang up
and charged the Olgaran, who, warned by Tassin's cry, swung around,
dropping the oil lamp and gripping the club in both hands. The lamp
smashed on the floor in a blaze of fire. The man swung his club,
missing the swift cyber and smashing a chair to matchwood as Sabre
veered away. Shouting in alarm, the Olgaran flailed about,
demolishing furniture and pottery as he tried to hit the elusive
intruder.

The door burst
open, and a flood of soldiers poured in. Two of them grabbed and
disarmed the terrified Olgaran, the rest spread out to surround
Sabre and the Queen. Fifteen hard-eyed men crowded into the room,
drawn swords glinting in their fists. Tassin glanced at Sabre and
raised a brow. Smiling crookedly, he spread his empty hands. He
could not defeat so many men without killing some of them, and
that, he was not prepared to do, since this was not a
life-threatening situation. The Queen scowled at him.

"Get us out of
here, Sabre!"

He shook his
head. "No way."

"Damn you! I
know you can beat them, so do it!"

Sabre shot her
a piercing look. "No. This is your doing. I'm not murdering them to
save your worthless hide again. Torrian can have you."

Tassin gasped
in outrage and brushed past a soldier to approach him, ignoring the
swords pointed at him. "Kill them!"

His mouth
twisted in a bitter smile. "No. I make my own decisions now. You're
the damned warrior queen, you kill them."

Her eyes
narrowed, and Sabre knew what was coming, but this time there was
no way to forestall it.

"I order you!"
she snarled.

Agony exploded
in Sabre's skull, and his hands flashed up to grip the brow band.
He fell to his knees, then keeled over backwards. The soldiers
muttered and stepped back as he writhed, his face twisted.

Sabre fought
the sucking darkness of the cyber's power, which rose like a tide
of shadow, threatening to swamp him. Whirling lights flashed in his
inner eye, a kaleidoscope of dizzying, mind-numbing confusion. His
eyes lost focus, and the ring of soldiers blurred. His vision came
and went as the waves of a foul psychic sea washed over him. His
legs went numb, cut off from his brain, then his hands released the
brow band and fell to his sides.

Paralysis
spread through him, and he fought to stay conscious, the last
battle in this unequal war of wills, the loss of which spelt his
defeat. If the cyber shocked his brain into unconsciousness, his
fate was sealed. He stared at the ceiling, trying to keep his
vision, an anchor in reality.

The struggle
appeared to have reached a stalemate. The cyber had robbed him of
all motor function, but was unable to re-establish its control.
Perhaps that was why it had not attempted such a determined
takeover before, knowing it would fail, and render him useless to
the Queen. In the face of his defiance, however, it had been forced
to make the attempt, since he was of no use to her anyway. The
strange numbness was abnormal. It seemed that the cyber, unable to
take over completely, had blocked his motor cortex, thereby robbing
him of all movement and sensation.

Many hands
lifted him, and the distorted mutter of the soldiers' voices
reached him through the numbness, a deep undertone to the Queen's
shrill fury. Tassin's face swam into focus as she glared down at
him, then blurred. He blinked, cybernetic fetters imprisoning his
mind. As yet, he was not utterly beaten, only helpless. The
soldiers carried him up the street, their boots clumping on the
cobbles.

Sabre pushed at
the psychic clamp that held him, testing its strength and finding
it immovable. Without the use of his body, his mind could only wait
for the end, a prospect he did not relish. How many days of hunger
and thirst, trapped in the dark prison of his skull, would he be
forced to endure before death claimed him? Cyber hosts were
genetically modified to live far longer without water than normal
humans, so his torment could last for up to a week.

Once more, he
tested the chains of numbness with a desperate lash of willpower,
but it rebounded off an impenetrable metaphysical wall. He was
trapped like a wild bird, and would beat his wings against the bars
of his cage until he died of exhaustion, his wings broken, his
spirit crushed by despair. He knew his enemy of old, and compassion
was not amongst its traits. If it could not win, neither would it
lose. Blissful oblivion beckoned, and he allowed it to wash over
him.

Tassin followed
Sabre's recumbent form, which four soldiers bore up the street,
torn between rage and self-pity. Why had he not done as she
ordered? By defying her, he had forced her to say those words, and
now he appeared to be comatose. He could have killed these men as
easily as the cyber had killed the soldiers in the gully, but
instead he was now crippled. In a way, it would serve him right if
the cyber did take over again, at least it obeyed her. The soldiers
surrounded her, but kept a respectful distance. If she tried to
run, they would grab her, and the thought of being manhandled did
not appeal to her.

King Xavier
waited in the palace's entrance hall, Victor yawning beside him.
The king's velvet robe had clearly been donned with haste, his hair
was rumpled and his brow furrowed. As she trudged into the hall, he
impaled her with hard black eyes.

"A foolish
attempt." He glanced at Sabre. "And your last, since your
man-at-arms appears to be injured."

Victor frowned
and walked over to Sabre. "What happened to him?"

Tassin glared
at the king. "It may be my last attempt, but the gods will punish
you for your injustice. You would condemn me to a life of horror
and pain. Yet it shall not be. You and yours will suffer for this
night's betrayal."

He shook his
head, watching Victor question the soldiers. "You exaggerate.
Torrian is a good man, and I doubt he will be so easy to murder.
Your threats are not worthy of serious consideration. You are
powerless to avoid your fate. Now you will go to your room, and
this time you will stay there. I do not enjoy being roused from my
bed in the dead of night."

Xavier marched
off before she could reply, leaving her glaring at his back with
helpless fury. A servant came forward and bowed, gesturing for her
to precede him down the hall. With a last glance at Sabre, she
headed for her rooms. Occasional red flashes still lighted the brow
band, running along it in sporadic patterns. A twinge of concern
went through her, and she regretted using the fateful words now.
Had she known this would happen, she would not have done so. She
had only wanted to punish him for his disobedience, thinking the
pain would force him to obey. Instead, he and the cyber had entered
into a battle that he appeared to have lost.

Sabre lived in
a shadowy realm that he had drifted into from the sweetness of
oblivion, caught in a limbo between subjugation and awakening.
Muttering voices reached him, and he opened his eyes. He lay on a
soft surface, and all that remained under his control were his
unfocussed eyes. Blurred shapes moved around him, then someone
raised his head and pressed a cup to his lips. Bitter liquid flowed
into his mouth, and he swallowed on reflex, an involuntary
reaction. He closed his eyes.

"What is wrong
with him?"

The question
filtered into Sabre's brain through the cyber's smothering control,
and he recognised Prince Victor's voice.

"He appears to
be under a powerful spell, Your Highness."

The second
voice was unfamiliar. Probably a magician, he thought, and wanted
to laugh. As if some primitive mage could understand the
intricacies of the cyber. A spell, indeed. Curious, he listened to
the conversation, straining to understand it through the
muffling.

"I know he uses
magic. Has he been caught up in his own spell?" Victor asked.

"I believe so,
Highness," the stranger replied.

"So there is
nothing you can do?"

"I am afraid
not. He uses an odd magic, one with which I am unfamiliar. Perhaps
he will still recover."

Silence clamped
down. Either the magician had left, or they had moved out of
earshot. Sabre allowed his thoughts to wander. Perhaps if Tassin
commanded the cyber, it would relinquish its partial control so he
could serve her again. The prospect was galling, but preferable to
lying here until he died of thirst, since these people had no way
of feeding him properly. He could not communicate this idea,
however, and he allowed the blackness to wash over him again.

When Sabre
drifted back to consciousness, the rumbling emptiness of his
stomach and a burning thirst told him that a fair amount of time
had passed. He wondered what had awakened him, and opened his eyes.
Everything was in focus. Surprised, he tried to move his arm, but
found that his body was still beyond his control. A voice close to
his ear startled him.

"Did you hear
me, Sabre? I said Queen Tassin has left for Arlin." Victor leant
over him, frowning.

Sabre blinked,
striving to move or speak, but the cyber kept him helpless. He
stared up at Victor, wondering how he could communicate with the
prince, then he became aware of something going on inside his head.
Concentrating on it, he received another surprise. The cyber's
information was displayed as a virtual image, unobtrusive, yet
easily available when he looked. The scanners' data, set against a
black background, showed points of light indicating the living
organisms in the room, since the stone walls blocked the
bio-scanners.

Sabre studied
the rest of the information now available to him. A structural
analysis of the room appeared as a faint collection of lines, to
the left of a scrolling list of numbers and letters. They indicated
room temperature, air pressure, atmospheric composition, the
co-ordinates of the planet according to the Schellion Grid, a
radiation level, which was slightly elevated, the exact time and
date on several major planets, with Myon Two first, and a plethora
of other data. As he contemplated this, it changed to a map of
those parts of the palace he had visited. That faded, and an
analysis of his bodily functions replaced it. Interested, he
concentrated on the computer image of his body, which showed the
areas the cyber controlled in green. Several major areas of his
brain were red, which explained the tiny supercomputer's incomplete
domination.

The cyber
appeared to be ready to strike a bargain, and make its information
available to him, presumably in return for his co-operation in
completing its mission. Perhaps Prince Victor's news about Tassin
had sparked the cyber's offer. Whatever the reason, it was a deal
he was eager to accept. He would pursue the Queen and rescue her,
he thought, if the cyber would relinquish control of his body. The
numbness receded, and pain shot up his arms and legs, making him
grimace. A cramp knotted his left thigh, and he gritted his
teeth.

"Sabre? Are you
all right?" Prince Victor demanded.

Sabre
stretched, wincing as stiff muscles protested. His limbs were
leaden and his stomach was a tight knot. Shakily he raised himself
on one elbow, and the prince straightened with a look of
relief.

"So, I wondered
if that bit of news might rouse you."

Sabre nodded,
running his tongue around a dry, foul-tasting mouth. "I need a
drink."

The prince
clapped his hands, bringing a hovering servant to his side, and
snapped terse orders to bring food and water. The servant scurried
away, and Victor smiled at Sabre, his eyes hard.

"You have
caused me a great deal of trouble. I hope what you have to teach is
worth it. King Torrian wanted you very badly, for his axe man to
play with. Apparently he is rather upset that you defeated him in
combat."