The Cyber Chronicles Book III - The Core (25 page)

A pin dropping
would have sounded like a thunderclap. The animal clown had paused
in mid-gambol, half of its legs in the air, to stare at them with
bulging baby-blue eyes. The trendil queen's icy green gaze was
fixed on Tassin, and the warrior retreated. Sabre tried to remember
how he had translated Tassin's words. It had had a lot to do with
proper respect and demanding to speak to the queen, but a few
'damns' had slipped into the mess, since it was hard to
improvise.

The animal
clown lowered its legs to the floor and crept away. The trendil
queen had stiffened in her languid pose, and a pair of blade arms
uncoiled. Her face was incapable of expression, but there was a
wealth of it in her words.

"An
invader-queen in my hive? A wooden-head queen? Why was I not told?"
Her hiss filled the silence with venom, reminding Sabre of a pit of
snakes poked with a stick, and he realised that the trendil queen
was not a nice person. A gold and silver blade arm beckoned.

"Come closer,
invader-queen."

Her gesture
and words held a wealth of menace, and Sabre's heart sank. He
tugged Tassin forward, translating while he walked. She clung to
him with a trembling hand, her eyes filled with fearful defiance.
As he stopped before the trendil queen, Sabre sank to one knee and
bowed his head. Her cold eyes flicked over him and impaled
Tassin.

"What are you
doing in my hive, wooden-head queen? Do you wish to rule the meat
animals in their pen?"

A wave of
hissing issued from the packed lines of warriors behind them, and
the cyber failed to translate it. Sabre prodded for a translation,
and it obliged with 'ha ha ha'. So, trendils could laugh.

He raised his
head. "Hive-queen. I must speak for my kin-mother-queen. She does
not speak your tongue." He paused as her cold eyes drifted to him.
"We come in search of a metal... object that came with us, but that
we have lost. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes."

The alien
queen sounded bored, and Sabre hurried on, "I know you don't wish
us in your hive, and we don't want to be here. The metal object
brought us here by accident. It's our tool. If you return it we
will leave, and not bother you further."

The matriarch
seemed to swell. "You! You who tried to wipe us out! You dare to
ask a favour of me!"

"No, I -"

The trendil
queen hissed, "You came to our world in your metal ships and walked
amongst us as if you owned the planet. We did not offer you harm,
yet you drove us away with bright weapons, and killed many. We
tried to speak to you, but you would not listen. You cleared our
land, cut our forests, slaughtered our meat animals. You spread
your ugliness in your wake. Metal boxes, rock paths that suffocated
the ground, metal webs that cut and hurt, evil smoke that spoilt
the air.

"Still we
offered you no harm, yet you killed any warrior or worker you
found. We moved away, but you came after us in metal birds that
roared, hunted us like prey animals. Then you found the city of a
sister-queen, and you destroyed it with fire and light. Twenty-five
thousand workers, eleven thousand warriors, and a queen. We felt
their deaths, every one, and when our sister-queen died, it was
war.

"How easily
you perished! Without your metal birds and fire, you sliced like
fat grubs, and you were good to eat. Since you had killed our meat
beasts, we brought you within the hive to breed for food. But you
made trouble, so we made you stupid, and harmless. You lost the
war, man-thing. We killed your warriors, but we never found a
queen. When you were defeated, you killed our world.

"You made many
flashes of light and thunder, and everything died, animals, trees,
and our people above the ground. You did not know we lived below,
did you? We survived, man-thing, on your brothers' flesh. The
surface of our world is now a death trap for any who set foot
there. Now you come to us asking for our help, when before you
never even spoke to us! What jest is this?"

Sabre kept his
head bowed while she vented her wrath, holding onto Tassin when she
would have retreated from the vicious hisses. The story did not
surprise him. The universe was filled with planets on which mankind
had made similar mistakes. Humans were famous for their arrogance,
yet seldom had they underestimated an alien intelligence as much as
this one. Turning to Tassin, he outlined the story the trendil
queen had told him. She looked shocked, and he prodded her.

"Say
something. She expects commands to come from you. I'm just an
interpreter."

"I... I don't
know what to say. If she blames us for that, we're doomed."

Sabre turned
to the trendil queen. "Hive-queen -"

"Your speech
is brief," she interrupted. "But then, you already knew the story,
of course."

"No. That was
not my kin-mother-queen's hive."

The ranks of
warriors behind them hissed, and the trendil queen waited for it to
die down. "You lie. The invader-queen was never found. It must be
her."

Sabre turned
to Tassin again. "She doesn't believe me. I told her those people
aren't ours. Say something."

"I don't know
what to say. Why can't she just give us the damned sword?"

Sabre faced
the alien queen. "We come from another land. My kin-mother-queen is
not the invader-queen. If she was, we would not have come to you
for help."

The warriors
behind them hissed again, and the trendil queen weaved her neck in
evident annoyance. "I don't care if she is that queen. She is the
same kind. You are man-things; our enemy!"

Sabre longed
to stand up, but remained on one knee, looking up at Tassin. "She's
not happy. Trouble is, they hate people. They certainly don't want
to help us. Say something."

"Well it's
people who are keeping them alive now, isn't it? Without them, they
would be extinct. Anyway, why don't you tell them about the
sword?"

Sabre turned
to the alien queen. "Hive-queen, you live on man-thing's flesh now.
They pay for their crime, but the metal tool you have is dangerous.
It could harm you if we don't take it away."

The trendil
queen leant forward. "How is it dangerous?"

"It is a
man-thing's weapon. It can make thunder and light, and kill your
entire hive."

"So why do you
want it?"

Sabre glanced
up at Tassin, then turned back to the alien queen. "We will take it
back to our land, where we will use it to fight our enemies, who
are also man-things."

The hive-queen
did not seem to notice that Tassin had not spoken. Her blade arms
coiled and uncoiled, revealing her tension. The razor-sharp blades
made a slithering noise as they rubbed against her leathery skin,
and her head weaved to and fro. "Very well. You can take the metal
tool, but I still have the right to challenge the invader-queen.
She will fight me."

Sabre's heart
sank. He was sure Tassin could hardly beat off a friendly dog with
a stick. The thought of her trying to fight this four-metre tall
bony monstrosity with scythe arms was a joke. The hissed laughter
from the warriors behind him confirmed that they thought so too.
The alien queen wanted revenge, pure and simple, and did not care
about fair play. Tassin waited for a translation, and he told her
that he would have to fight one of the warriors, receiving the
expected horrified reaction. Before she could protest, he faced the
hive-queen again.

"We are from
different cultures, different peoples. You demand a blood debt
battle between queens. We have different traditions. We know blood
debt, but our queens don't fight. They appoint a warrior. If we
must accept your challenge, then we ask that it be on our
terms."

The trendil
queen lowered her head to regard him with wintry eyes. "You? We all
know how puny you man-things are in battle. It makes little
difference whether it's you or she who dies, so long as one lives
to remove the metal tool from our hive."

"Then you
accept?"

"Yes."

"Which warrior
do you choose?"

The alien
queen swept the assembly with a gimlet eye, which came to rest on
the warrior that had spoken to them at the door. "She."

Sabre turned
to Tassin. "Go and wait by that pillar. You'll be safe, whether I
win or lose. The queen wants the sword taken away."

"No! You can't
fight one of these monsters!" She clung to his arm as he regained
his feet, his knee aching.

"I must." He
held her away, aware that every eye was upon them. "Don't make a
scene, and don't argue. I should win. Cybers are pitted against
aliens all the time. They usually win. If I don't, you can make the
sword take you back. Don't argue!"

Tassin closed
her mouth with a snap and glanced at their audience. Her mulish
expression clashed with the shimmer of tears in her eyes, and she
swallowed hard. "Good luck."

Chapter Sixteen

Tassin walked
to the pillar and stood beside it, where Sabre hoped she would be
out of harm's way. She raised her chin, her eyes alight with
defiance in spite of her fear, and he admired her pluck once more.
He was sure the trendil queen would give her the sword if he lost,
but he was not so certain the Core would obey her. If it didn't,
she would be trapped here, and he doubted she would be allowed to
live. He had to win this battle, but his confident words had been
only to comfort her. A cyber had never fought a trendil, so he had
no reference data on their weaknesses or strengths. Sabre was all
too well aware that a cyber was mostly human, just flesh and bone.
He had not yet fully recovered from his previous ordeal, and his
bio status was only at sixty-five per cent.

The
hive-queen's impatient hiss brought his attention back to the
impending battle. The warrior stood ready in the centre of the
floor, blade arms extended. As he walked towards the beast, he
studied her, looking for some sign of weakness, a chink in the
knobbly armour. Her body seemed to be a bad target, for although it
was the most accessible, it was also the most heavily armoured. Her
head was far out of reach, which left only her neck and limbs. He
stopped before her, and she regarded him with flat, fiery eyes. The
extended blade arms twitched, longing to rend his flesh, but she
did not make the first move.

Sabre looked
at the trendil queen, wondering if she had to give a signal, and
she hissed, "Begin, man-thing. You move first."

Sabre sprang
forward with a cyber's peerless acceleration, taking three running
steps before performing a graceful handspring that brought him
within range of his foe as her blade arms converged. Leaping at the
beast, he landed a double-handed hammer blow to her lower neck. The
trendil recoiled, and Sabre's hands flamed with pain from the
full-power blows on her hard flesh. He spun and chopped at one of
the blade arms that flashed towards him, smashing it aside. The
blade dug into the resin floor, and the warrior hissed.

The other arm
slashed in, waist high, and, as he leapt over it, her tail hit him
in the side and sent him skidding three metres along the floor. He
rolled aside as the warrior advanced on him, struggling to suck in
air. The familiar grating pain of a broken rib stabbed him when at
last he was able to draw a breath. Only his reinforcing had saved
him from a crushed rib cage, and a soft hiss of surprise came from
the watching warriors. No normal man could have survived that
blow.

The warrior
attacked with renewed ferocity, her blade arms and tail working in
synchronised precision, chopping and slashing from all directions.
He ducked, leapt, and threw himself into fast rolls, performing
back flips and handsprings with the sinuous ease of a trained
acrobat. He did not repeat the mistake he had made the first time,
when he had allowed himself to spend too long in the air whilst
jumping over the blade arm, and calculated his leaps to factor in
his opponent's unusual speed. His movements seemed effortless, but
a thin film of sweat soon sheened him. His chest heaved, partly
from the exertion and partly from the pain of his broken rib.

The cyber
warned him of attacks from behind, vital against such formidable,
multi-limbed opponent. Tassin whimpered in alarm whenever a blade
shaved him, and, although he had not landed a telling blow on the
trendil, the ease with which he avoided her attacks was testimony
to his peerless skill and agility. The trendil showed no sign of
tiring, however. Sabre longed to land blows on her head, the only
part of her that might be vulnerable, but she made no attempt to
use her teeth. Twice he struck a lashing blade arm without effect,
proving that the flexible bony limbs were extremely strong.

Sabre knew he
had to get close to this opponent or he would lose through sheer
exhaustion. His bio status dropped rapidly, already at sixty per
cent. As a blade arm swished towards him, he ran at the beast and
leapt, grabbed her knobbly neck and hung on. The beast's rough skin
afforded a good grip, and he was swung high as the warrior reared.
He wrapped his legs around her neck, swinging himself aside when a
blade arm whistled past perilously close. Her hand arms unfolded
and reached for him, their long claws curled. He suspected that
these were not usually used for fighting, but the trendil wanted
him off her neck.

Releasing his
leg hold, he swung by his arms and kicked the warrior's hands with
a crunch of breaking bone. The warrior hissed, then flung herself
down in an attempt to crush him. He let go a second before she
thudded to the floor, landing on his feet beside her. Leaping at
her head, he kicked her twice in the jaw, broke several glass teeth
and caused blood to spurt from one nostril.

The audience
hissed as the trendil struggled to rise. Sabre flung himself onto
her neck and held her down, raining blows that would have smashed a
man's skull on her armoured head. A blade arm slashed at him, and
he smashed it away. The cyber's warning flash made him duck as her
tail blade swept over him to bury itself in the resin floor with a
thud. The other blade arm whipped around and sliced into his upper
arm. Blood flowed, but adrenalin blocked the pain. He kicked her
tail, but could not snap the imbedded blade, and the warrior jerked
it free.