The Cyber Chronicles Book III - The Core Read online

  The Cyber Chronicles Book III

  The Core

  T C Southwell

  Published by T C Southwell at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2010 by T C Southwell

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Prologue

  After fleeing her kingdom to escape the kings who plotted to annex her realm through marriage, Tassin and Sabre crossed the Death Zone and explored the lands on the far side of the Badlands, searching for a peaceful place to live, at least for a while. The seventeen-year-old Queen survived the dangers of the Zone and the lands beyond thanks to Sabre’s peerless survival and fighting skills, and the reasons for those were the same reasons he hated himself, and knew he was ultimately doomed to a fate worse than death. He was a cyborg.

  The cyber-bio combat unit is the ultimate hi-tech fighting machine. Sabre has metal-plated bones and internal body armour, and was once controlled by a micro-supercomputer embedded in a brow band attached to the skull plating under his scalp. A cyber’s built-in equipment includes bio-scanners and ground-penetrating scanners, plus a cybernetic interface capable of controlling animals over a limited distance. In his natural environment, the advanced world that created him, he is able to interface with other AIs and break security codes and firewalls with ease.

  A cyber is considered to be the most dangerous weapon ever created. His reactions are honed to split-second precision, and he is trained in every art of combat, able to use any weapon, speak every language and operate any craft, plus the data stored in his brain, intended for the supercomputer’s use, is updated at regular intervals. He is so dangerous, in fact, that his creators have ensured that no cyber will ever gain a sense of self, with all the ramifications that stem from it.

  The cyber saved Tassin, who, while she disliked his blank stares and clipped tones, enjoyed his utter obedience. He helped her to flee her kingdom, but, during the pursuit over the mountains, he was attacked and fell several hundred metres, damaging the brow band. The host, enslaved almost since birth, gained his freedom, and Tassin met a gentle, unassuming man. The damaged control unit was unable to regain control, and Sabre agreed to help Tassin escape her pursuers, whereupon host and cyber reached an uneasy truce.

  The cyber was still able to cause him pain, and at first denied him access to its scanners and data. Sabre has suffered all his life as a spectator, unable even to focus his eyes, enduring terrible pain and abuse. He knows, however, that his freedom is only temporary, for his owner will return for him one day. Cybers are extremely expensive.

  In the Kingdom of Olgara, King Xavier betrayed Tassin, but Sabre rescued her again. When she ordered him to kill the soldiers that recaptured them, however, he refused, and entered into a monumental mental battle with the cyber. The supercomputer succeeded in robbing Sabre of all motor control, and he was certain he would suffer a slow and painful death.

  The cyber’s mission is to obey Tassin and keep her safe, and it offered Sabre a bargain, its help in return for his co-operation. Sabre agreed, and the control unit shared its information with him. When he discovered pre-war weapons in a ruined city that could keep Tassin safe from her enemies, Sabre knew he had to take her home. Once her castle was armed with laser cannons and grenade launchers, the kings would soon learn to leave her alone. Almost a year has passed, and the prospect of being returned to the horror of cyber control is one Sabre dreads, and will do anything to avoid. He still has a mission to complete in the Death Zone, and it offers him a way out…

  Chapter One

  The soft dawn light had hardened into mid-morning brightness and the chirring of caracans filled the still air when Sabre scooped Tassin up and carried her out to the donkey cart. The day would be hot, he surmised.

  She twined her arms around his neck. "I can walk, really."

  Had she truly objected to being carried, he mused, she should have put up a far more convincing opposition. The way she clung to him still made him a little uncomfortable, although he seemed to be becoming used to it. Nevertheless, he was glad when he reached the cart and placed her in it. He led the donkeys from the ruined city, turning south towards the badlands and the Death Zone. Owing to the wide circle they had travelled, they headed back by a different route, skirting the jungle to the west.

  Sabre avoided stones that might jar Tassin's half-healed wound, since the cart had no suspension. The scrubland grew harsher, the coarse grass dry and yellow, the stunted trees twisted.

  The sun blazed overhead when Sabre stopped in the shade of a clump of trees and settled cross-legged on the ground, opened one of the packs and handed Tassin a cooked tuber left over from the previous night’s supper. Since she had fled her kingdom to escape a forced marriage to the rapist King Torrian, her life seemed to consist of nothing but endless travel and its accompanying miseries. Sabre’s tireless strength amazed her, and his strange powers had saved her from many perils on their journey, yet he remained something of a mystery.

  When her father had died, leaving her at the mercy of the three kings who sought to wed her and claim her kingdom, the wizard Manutim had agreed to help her. His gift of a strange casket had at first excited her, but she had been disappointed when she had found only a man inside. He had proven to be far more than a mere man, however. He was a peerless warrior who possessed powers she still did not understand.

  At first, he had been strange indeed. He had stared through her as if he was blind, and had spoken in a dead, toneless voice, yet he had obeyed her every wish without argument or complaint. She recalled the terrible day when one of the enchanted wolves Torrian's mage had sent after them had attacked him, and he had fallen from the cliff. The accident had broken the device on his forehead that had controlled him until then, and led to the amazing revelation of meeting the true man. He had explained his origins, and that before the accident he had somehow been under the geas of a machine, but much of it still confused her.

  When he had stepped from the casket, his skin had been pale gold and his hair mere stubble. Months in the sun had darkened his complexion and his dark blond hair had grown. Sabre kept it short with his knife, which he also used to scrape the stubble off his chin.

  A thin scar ran down the centre of his forehead to halfway down his nose, more ran along his cheekbones and the edge of his jaw, and continued in his hair as white lines. They also ran down his arms, dividing at his wrists to run along the top of each finger to its tip. Still more ran down the sides and centre of his chest and along the top of his legs. He had explained that they had been inflicted by the people who had somehow created him, who had cut him open to strengthen his bones with a metal
called barrinium. He had been created as a weapon in a place beyond the stars, a supreme killing machine controlled by the band of golden metal that curved around his brow, about three centimetres wide and fifteen centimetres long, its rounded ends not quite reaching his hairline. The strip of black crystals embedded in it sparkled with tiny red, green and amber lights. His face, with its lean contours and noble features, fascinated her. In her experience, warriors possessed coarse, brutish countenances, often battle-scarred and battered, but apart from the scars his creators had inflicted, his face was unmarked and oddly sensitive.

  Even the battles he had fought since she had known him had not marked him, and his skill as a warrior amazed her. His narrow, high-bridged nose gave him a noble air, although she had seen little of such fine features amongst the aristocracy of her land. His dark brows were almost level above his grey eyes, and he had a gentle smile. He tore a tough tuber with perfect white teeth, and even in repose, his lithe, whipcord torso possessed a hard, sharp-edged musculature. He still wore the strange dark grey clothes he had donned after stepping almost naked from the casket, somewhat worn and ragged now. The magical weapons he had brought with him were all gone, and now he carried only a sword and knife.

  Sabre wondered why Tassin stared at him so intently sometimes, when she thought he would not notice. He always noticed, vigilance was second nature to him, and a person's attention was not something to be ignored, although in her case it was benign. She kept herself well groomed, considering their primitive living conditions, and her extreme youth allowed her to endure the hardships with little outward effects. Her long jet hair gleamed like polished satin, finger-combed and plaited to keep it out of the way. Her skin had darkened from its former creamy hue to a pale gold, and her face had become a little thinner, but remained the loveliest he had seen. Although, at less than one point eight metres, he was not a tall man, the diminutive Queen was a good fifteen centimetres shorter.

  Thick black lashes framed her dark blue eyes, which often sparkled with anger and defiance beneath her arched brows, and her stubborn chin reflected her character well. He looked away, berating himself for allowing his eyes to linger. He had been in her company since the tiny supercomputer housed in the brow band had been broken, releasing him from its control.

  Although he recalled the time he had spent with her before that, it did not really count, since he had not been himself. The part of him that still dwelt in the shadowy recess where he had once been imprisoned mocked his growing attachment to this young girl, jeering the hated name he had tried so hard to forget. Cyborg! He could not escape it, though, no matter how hard he tried. He was a cyber-bio combat unit, grade A, a peerless fighting machine. His job was to protect her, and the bargain struck with the damaged micro-supercomputer allowed him his freedom.

  The strange feelings he had for her were confusing, but he knew better than to act on them. He looked down at his hands, recalling the agony the surgeons had inflicted upon him during the operation to strengthen his bones. He was capable of crushing a man's skull with one blow. He could smash through fifteen centimetres of concrete and survive numerous methods of killing, should they be practised upon him. He loathed himself.

  Gearn stopped and stared at the track, torn between disbelief and triumph. For days he had walked around the city, hoping to find a sign that the Queen and her companion had survived its curse and journeyed on. He crouched beside the wheel marks and studied the hoof prints of two donkeys. The warrior mage's faint track was unmistakeable from the zigzag pattern on the soles of his boots.

  The Queen, he was sure, rode in the cart. He glanced along the trail, frowning. The warrior mage had turned back towards the Badlands. Gearn shrugged it off. It did not matter now where they went; he would overtake them and set the trap he had planned. He followed the tracks, glad they were easy to discern. The fact that the warrior mage made no effort to hide his trail told Gearn that either his foe thought he was dead, or was confident of his ability to defeat him.

  The months of living in the outdoors had left no mark upon Gearn. His spells protected him from hardship, although the frequent castings drained him. It drew more from his surroundings, however, and each place where he used sorcery was left withered and dead. In areas where life was abundant, it merely sickened the plants and beggared the soil, but in this poor land it turned the vegetation a crisp brown and reduced the sandy soil to lifeless dust. It also affected a far larger area, and his campsites were now dead spots.

  The quest to capture the Queen had become an obsession. He refused to entertain the notion that the warrior mage was more powerful than him. It was just not possible, and he intended to prove it. The chase had become a test of his abilities, and he was determined to succeed, not only in capturing the Queen, but in killing the warrior mage too.

  Murdor's death and the warrior mage's subsequent immunity to Gearn's illusions had shaken him. Since then, his traps' failure had taught him much about his foe's considerable abilities. Now, however, he was prepared, and the next trap would succeed. He gestured and murmured a short incantation for strength, and the grass around him withered.

  Sabre glanced back at Tassin, who sat on the donkey cart behind him and squinted across the scrubland, shading her eyes. Although he often trotted for most of the day, now he led the donkeys at a walk, to let them rest a bit. A week had passed, and they were deep in the blighted area, approaching the desert again. They had not encountered any monsters, and he hoped their luck held out as they neared the source. The scanners had picked up traces of radiation drifting on the wind, and he deduced that they were heading into a region close to a bomb site. The radiation level was not dangerous for the short time Tassin would be exposed to it, but the creatures that lived in the area were mutated. After killing a six-legged rabbit for supper, Sabre had wondered if the water was contaminated.

  As they travelled south the strange animals had become more plentiful, and they had come across an eagle that had obviously not flown since it had plunged from its nest as a juvenile. The bird had had shrunken, twisted wings, yet it had survived on the ground, indicating that others were even less able to fend for themselves. They had encountered half bald birds, blind rabbits, a two-headed deer and a fox with three tails. Sabre had been reluctant to eat the mutated creatures, and Tassin refused, so they had switched to roots, nuts and fruit, although some of them were deformed too. He had found a few healthy chickens and rabbits, and these they had eaten.

  Her injury was almost healed, and she was able to walk for spells, riding in the cart when she grew tired. Sabre changed the dressing every night, and she appeared to enjoy his gentle, if impersonal, ministrations. He was glad it was healing well; he found tending the injury unsettling. She always watched him so intently, and he wondered what she found so interesting. Was it the bit of metal welded to his head or the ugly scars that fascinated her? He could not berate her for it though; it was not her fault he was a freak.

  Sabre kept an eye on the scanners, alert for radiation hot spots. The region puzzled him. There was no sign of a bomb site. Instead, there were bright spots of radiation spread all over the sickly land. When they came across a spring, he found the water uncontaminated and filled the water skins, then left Tassin to bathe.

  Sabre investigated a hot spot three hundred metres from the spring, and discovered a black, shiny stone. Squatting, he picked it up and examined it. It was a piece of black glass from the desert, where the bombs had melted the sand. Deadly radiation filled those sites, and the chunk he held was highly radioactive. Although harmless to him, it would make Tassin sick, maybe even kill her. The only way it could have ended up so far from the desert was if someone had brought it, and whoever had been foolish enough to venture into the black glass in the desert was surely dead.

  Digging a hole, he buried it in the dry, sandy soil, which would mask some of its emissions. He walked four hundred metres to another spot of radioactivity, and found second fragment of black glass. One, he could unders
tand, dropped by a wandering, dying man, but two? Perhaps the same man, yet they were a fair distance apart. He buried it and walked on, heading for yet another bright spot. By the time he decided it was safe to return to the camp, he had buried five pieces of black glass, and arrived at the unsettling conclusion that all the bright spots on his scanners were bits of radioactive glass.

  Tassin roasted roots over the fire when he returned, and the donkeys tore at the scrubby trees nearby. Her smile faded at his dour expression.

  "What's wrong?"

  He sat on the other side of the fire. "I don't like this place. It's strange. I've found radioactive glass from the desert scattered around here. That's what's making everything so sick, and I don't know how it got here."

  "Some now-dead fool brought it from the desert?"

  "That's what I thought at first, but there's too much of it, and it's all over the place. I buried what I found, but there's bound to be more."

  "You touched it?"

  He smiled. "Don't worry, I was treated for it."