The Cyber Chronicles Book III - The Core (6 page)

A red warning
light flashed deep in his mind, drawing his attention inwards to a
scrolling column of data. It informed him that the wine contained
an unknown substance, possibly a poison. That the cyber was unable
to identify it was strange, but it was not the first time he had
encountered an unknown substance on this planet. This one, however,
was not the same as what the Oroka had used to subdue him. He
raised the glass to his lips, but did not drink the wine.

Jassine sipped
hers, smiling. They still stood near the altar, and he wondered if
she thought he was lying about his immunity to it, for she seemed
to like hanging around the radioactive glass. She asked a few more
questions, and he found that he was strangely relaxed, considering
the situation. Glancing down at his glass, he discovered it was
half empty and cursed his inattention. Something was making him
unwary, and he wondered if the incense was also a narcotic.

This would
probably be a good time to head for the door, he reflected, yet he
could not summon the energy to act on the thought. What was even
stranger than his lack of motivation was his inability to perceive
any danger in the situation. It all seemed quite acceptable,
despite the alarm bells ringing in his mind along with the cyber's
flashing lights. It had succeeded in partially analysing the
substance, which appeared to be a mild sedative. He answered
another question, and noticed that his speech was slurred. Surely
he could not be drunk after one glass of wine? It must be potent
stuff, maybe five hundred years old, from the pre-war civilisation.
A cold spurt of logic intruded, reminding him of the sedative, yet
still he could not formulate a reaction to it. He caught his
wandering thoughts and concentrated on what the priestess was
saying.

"...Old
machines and weapons from before the war, stored in a room
downstairs, would you like to see it?"

Sabre
shrugged. "Sure."

Replacing the
glass on the tray, he followed Jassine into the shadows whence the
priests had periodically emerged, parting musty curtains to enter
an oil lamp-lighted corridor. Priests flitted past like cowled
ghosts, their heads bowed and faces shadowed. Once again, he
wondered why he did not find the situation alarming. The priestess
led him around two corners and down a flight of steps, then opened
a steel door and entered a room carrying an oil lamp she had
filched from the wall outside. Placing the lamp on a table, she
turned and smiled at him.

"What do you
think?"

Sabre looked
around at what must have once been a computer room. Dusty consoles
lined the walls and terminals cluttered the tables, keyboards
before them. He wandered over to a bank of old-fashioned radar
screens next to what looked like a firing console. This had been
the city's nerve centre, he surmised, the control room that housed
all the tactical defence equipment. He turned to the priestess, and
found himself alone. The oil lamp still flickered on the table, but
the door through which they had entered was closed.

Sabre stared
at it, puzzled, then went over to it and discovered that the inside
handle had been removed. The door was flush with the wall, and the
hairline cracks around its perimeter were far too narrow to insert
anything into to pry it open. For a minute he pondered it, the
sedative fogging his mind, making it impossible to think straight.
He nodded.

They were
trying to kill him. The thought burst upon him like a gas bubble in
a quagmire, leaving an equally bad stench. The altar stone killed
all who made it through the cursed lands, but he was immune, so she
had locked him in here to starve. He recalled that the open door
had been at least ten centimetres thick, designed to survive a
nuclear attack. Sabre shook his head to try to clear the numbness
that clouded his thinking. He still had the laser, but that was
useless against a ten-centimetre-thick steel door.

Even with the
two extra power packs, it would probably only melt through about
five centimetres of steel in a circle big enough for him to climb
through. Turning away, he studied the room. A command centre had to
have ventilation, for people spent days or even weeks in here
during an attack, controlling the defences.

His eyes came
to rest on an air vent in the opposite wall, but it was only about
ten centimetres in diameter. So, air vents were out, but there had
to be at least one emergency escape route, in case the enemy
breached the control centre. He consulted the cyber's information.
The room's structural analysis showed six air vents that led to the
surface, filled with numerous filters and scrubbers. There were
three extractor fans and three blowers, all non-functional. That
meant he would not die of starvation, but asphyxiation. He studied
the analysis again, and found an escape hatch situated in the far
corner, behind a cabinet.

Going over to
it, he noticed that the cabinet had already been moved aside, and
stopped in shock when he stepped around it. Two skeletons grinned
up at him. One was a cyber. The barrinium-plated bones gleamed dull
gold in the flickering light, and the dead brow band was black. He
contemplated his identical twin's bones. The tough harness and
trousers still clung to them, and the wrist laser and cannon hung
around a skeletal wrist. The explosives attached to the harness
were no use in this room; he would only succeed in injuring
himself. Had the cyber released its host before he died? Had he
known a brief moment of freedom, or had he lost consciousness
before the control unit had failed, and never been able to as much
as cry out in despair?

Wrenching his
mind from the morbid thoughts, he studied the second skeleton's
expensive silver shirt and shiny grey trousers, the sort rich young
fops favoured, a useless laser holstered in its belt. Some young
fool bent on adventure and exploration, no doubt, ignorant of the
fact that primitive people could be dangerous, especially
post-holocaust people. Clearly the cyber had been sent to search
for him, and had fallen into the same trap. A cyber, however, would
not have drunk the drugged wine. They only consumed water, and he
would have detected the sedative too.

Cybers were
not stupid, so how had the priestess lured him in here? Certainly
not with the same ruse she had used on Sabre, for cybers had no
curiosity. She must have told him that the man he sought was here.
The cyber would have asked about him and described him, and would
have wanted to leave as soon as he was told that his quarry was not
there. So, she must have told him the truth, brought him here and
told him to search the room, then locked him in. The bones were
approximately twenty years old, according to the scanners, and
Jassine appeared to be about fifty, so she could be
responsible.

The dead cyber
had possessed the same structural information Sabre did, yet he had
failed to escape. Stepping closer, Sabre examined the circular
emergency escape hatch set into the floor. The handle that
activated the high-tensile steel bars that slotted into the
concrete on either side of it was sheared off. Cold fear crept
through him. There was no way out. In a few hours the air would
grow stale, and his barrinium-plated bones would join the pile.

Slumping
against the cabinet, he cursed his stupidity. Now they would take
Tassin to the altar and let the radiation do their dirty work. She
would be dead within a week or so. He had failed again, he thought
bitterly, because he had tried to be a nice guy. The thought of
Tassin paying for his mistake made his chest ache. He should have
refused when the mutants had insisted he come to the city. The
cyber would never have agreed to come here, and it would have
killed the mutant men if they had tried to force the issue.

The oil lamp
sputtered and went out, and the cyber automatically switched his
vision to infrared. He wondered how much time he had wasted
pondering his fate, and how much remained before his breathing
quickened as the oxygen level dropped. Asphyxiation was not a
pleasant death, nor was the radiation poisoning Tassin faced.

Chapter Four

Tassin paced
Dena's hovel, waiting for her to return. The girl had left saying
that she would bring food, but Tassin was not sure it was safe to
eat the mutants' food. The shadows outside lengthened and darkened,
and she was worried about Sabre. He would not make her wait until
after dark, and if he had emerged and found her gone, he might be
searching for her now. She should probably go back to the temple
and see if he was there, but she had no idea how to find it. The
city was a warren of shacks built within the old ruins, cramped
passages linking them. She would have to wait for Dena. That
decided, Tassin fretted for her return.

Dena
reappeared an hour later, and Tassin wanted to simultaneously hug
and spank the girl, who seemed wary, as if sensing this. Tassin
controlled the urges with an effort and confronted her.

"Did you find
out anything? Sabre could be waiting for me by the cart. Perhaps I
should go back and look?"

Dena shook her
head as she dumped a sack of shrivelled vegetables on the rickety
table. "He's not there, I checked. The cart's gone too. They must
have put it somewhere, and they're looking for you."

Tassin's heart
sank. "What's happened to him?"

"I'd guess
whatever happened to the star man, and the other man with a light
on his head."

"We must free
him."

The child
looked up from peeling vegetables. "Maybe he's already dead. Forget
him. We'll go to your land without him."

"No!" Tassin
knelt beside the child, wanting to shake the little brat until her
teeth rattled. "Dena, we need him. We'll never make it across the
desert without him."

Dena nibbled a
raw carrot. "But the priests have got him, and we'll never get in
there. And what if he's already dead?"

"He's very
hard to kill. If they attacked him, they wouldn't stand a chance.
But they've killed a cyber before, so they must have a way, only
they're all slow ways. Poison, suffocation, gas... they wouldn't
have gas... drowning... but there's not much water around."

Dena munched
her carrot. "Some poisons are quick."

Tassin shot
her an acid look. "You're not helping."

The child
shrugged. "It's true."

"How can we
get into the temple?"

"We
can't."

"Come on,
there must be a way."

Dena shook her
head. "Only the priests and priestesses go in the temple."

"That's
it!"

Dena eyed her.
"What's it?"

"I need a
priestess' robe."

Dena laughed,
her mouth full of carrot. "How will you get that?"

Tassin
frowned, thinking. "I need a weapon. Do you know where the cart
is?"

"No."

"Can you find
out?"

Dena shrugged
again. "Probably."

"Will
you?"

"Okay, when
I've had my dinner."

Tassin glanced
at the pile of raw vegetables. "You're going to eat all those?"

Dena
nodded.

"Can't you eat
when you get back?"

"I'm
hungry!"

Tassin leant
forward. "Listen to me, Dena. Sabre could be dying, right now, and
without him we can't cross the desert. It's impossible. The curse
would kill us – me, and there are monsters too. If we don't save
him we're stuck here, and you'll have to keep hiding me. If they
find out you've been hiding me, they'll punish you, won't
they?"

Dena's eyes
narrowed. "I could throw you out."

"I would
tell."

"They wouldn't
believe you."

"I know your
name; I know where you live, and people saw you bring me here."

Dena
considered, then gave a hearty sigh, picked up another carrot and
stomped out. Tassin settled down to wait, worry gnawing at her.

Sabre studied
the glowing hole in the escape hatch, which had used up two power
packs already. The dead cyber's laser was empty, as was the
spacer's, and they only had one spare power pack between them. The
hole was still too small to get his hand into, and he plugged the
second to last power pack into the laser. May as well go out with a
bang instead of a whimper, he thought. The laser burnt oxygen, but
it made little difference. Either he got out, or he died.

Aiming the
weapon at the hole, he held the trigger and moved the beam around
its edge. The searing light melted the high-tensile alloy, and
molten metal dripped into the tunnel below. No fresh air blew in
through it, so the other end was also sealed, and he hoped it was
not buried under a pile of rubble. The hole gradually enlarged, but
the metal had a high melting point and it took a long time.

A laser was
not designed for cutting metal. For that, you needed a needle-gun,
with a beam so fine it would slice a hole in no time. The laser's
more diffuse beam was intended to burn holes in living flesh. A
needle-gun could be used as a weapon, but only to slice a victim in
half, or chop off some vital extremity. If fired at a man like a
laser, it would burn a tiny hole right through him, and, unless it
hit a vital organ, like the heart or aorta, the victim would hardly
notice he had been shot.

Burning a hole
in the escape hatch was a long shot, anyway. He might put his hand
through it and find there was no way of opening it from the other
side either, but there was no reason to shear off the outer handle.
According to the cyber's information on tactical control bunker
design, the tunnel would run for more than the five hundred metres,
and if a bomb had fallen anywhere along its length, he was
dead.

After a five
minute burn, the power pack gave out. Sabre inspected the glowing
hole, which was bigger, but it would still be a tight squeeze. He
may as well use the last power pack, he decided. If this did not
work, he would have no use for it, anyway. The escape hatch was
only six centimetres thick; he could not have burnt a hole this
size in the main door. When the last pack died, he inspected the
glowing hole again. It looked big enough, just. Now all he had to
do was wait for it to cool. He leant against the cabinet and gazed
at his grinning companions. Lethargy made him yawn.