The Cyber Chronicles Book III - The Core
Read The Cyber Chronicles Book III - The Core Online
Authors: T C Southwell
Tags: #artificial intelligence, #aliens, #mutants, #ghouls, #combat, #nuclear holocaust, #epic battles, #cybernetic organisms
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
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Table of
Contents
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.
