Dellon hefted his sword as the knights dragged Sabre closer, making pain shoot from his injured shoulder. He turned his head towards the one on his right, mumbling. The man leant closer in a natural reaction, and Sabre head-butted him in the side of his helmet, left an oblong dent and sent him staggering away. The third knight stepped up to take his place, and Dellon approached.
"So, warrior mage, at last you are defeated."
Sabre raised his head and smiled. "It cost you, though."
Dellon glanced around. "Indeed. But it was worth it. With you gone, Tassin is at my mercy, and will meet my sword's blade soon enough."
"A nice cousin you are."
"I am the King! She abandoned us. She has no right to return now!"
"She came to save me, and she has more courage than you and all your cronies put together."
Dellon snorted, walking around to stand beside Sabre. "She should not have wasted her time, then."
Sabre twisted his neck to keep Dellon in sight. "You think you can chop my head off, huh?"
"You think I cannot?"
"I'll bet you're going to have a jolly good try."
"You are not invincible."
"Nope, but I am pretty well bloody indestructible."
Dellon raised the sword. "We shall see. Hold him."
The knights forced Sabre to bow down, twisted his arms behind his back and caused fresh pain to lance from his shoulder, which he suspected was broken. He sagged as a wave of weakness washed over him. His bio-status had dropped to thirty-nine per cent. The strange thing was, he mused dully, his bio-status would continue to fall even though he was no longer exerting himself. He had burnt up all his fuel, as well as most of his reserves. He was burning muscle tissue now, and, as a consequence, his condition would continue to worsen for a while yet. The knights cursed and held him up.
Dellon swung his sword high. As he brought the blade whistling down, a scream echoed around the room. The sword hit the back of Sabre's neck and bounced off, smashing his face into the ground. The impact jarred the hilt from Dellon's hands, and the weapon hit the floor with a shrill clatter. Stars swirled in Sabre's eyes, blinding him. The brow band had taken the brunt of the impact, and he recognised the anguished voice that cried his name from the courtyard door.
"Energy burst," he muttered.
A surge of strength suffused him as the cyber dumped adrenalin into his system. His bio-status shot up to forty-two per cent, and he wrenched his left arm free. Rising to his feet, he punched Dellon in the face. The Prince crashed to the floor, and soldiers boiled into the throne room, surrounding Sabre. He recognised some of them from the dungeons, and knew he could relax. They were Tassin's men. The energy burst was used up, and his bio-status plummeted to thirty-five per cent. Sabre fell to his knees and sank back on his haunches, his head bowed. He swayed, then keeled over on his back.
Tassin ran towards Sabre, Tarl overtaking her at a spritely hobble, muttering curses. Her men went over to disarm the three swaying knights. Tassin fell to her knees in the blood as Tarl felt for the pulse in the cyber's neck, his brows knotted.
"His heartbeat's still over two hundred. He must have lost a lot of blood." He peered at the brow band. "He's unconscious, and probably in the red."
Tassin gazed at Sabre's peaceful, blood-splattered face. Blood oozed from cuts on his arms, legs and neck, and his armour was sliced and dented. Tarl shouted for bandages, and a soldier ran out. Tassin glanced around at the carnage in her throne room. Her eyes flinched from the sprays of blood on the walls and hangings. Crimson pools spread across the floor, and armour-clad bodies lay sprawled in them.
She counted the corpses. "He defeated twenty-three knights."
Tarl looked at her. "Something must have happened. He shouldn't be in this state."
"Dellon tried to cut his head off."
The ex-cyber tech chuckled. "That was pretty dumb of him."
"The sword... bounced off."
Tarl nodded and lifted Sabre, revealing a deep, oozing cut on the back of his neck. A gleam of gold winked through the blood in it. "You can't behead a cyber."
"Will he be all right?"
"Sure, he just needs a lot of stitches and rest. I wish I had a drip and some medications, but he'll recover without them. He won't be of any use to you for a while, though."
"I don't care about that," Tassin said. "The castle is taken. He will not have to fight again."
Tarl examined Sabre's shoulder, probed the joint and lifted his arm to rotate it. "That's what the problem was. He's broken his shoulder."
"He was fighting with only one arm?"
"Yeah. I don't know for how long, though."
Tassin rose to her feet and called her captain, ordering a stretcher. The soldier returned with bandages, and Tarl bound Sabre's wounds before the cyber was carried to a bedchamber, Tarl limping beside him.
The Queen turned to her captain. “Send messengers to my generals in Torrian's army, commanding them to turn against the King and fight on Sharmian's side. Also, send messengers to all of my loyal lords and ask for soldiers to defend my castle.”
The captain bowed and ran off, shouting at his men. Tassin trotted after the stretcher, catching up as they lifted Sabre onto a sumptuous four-poster bed in one of the more luxurious bedchambers.
The soldiers left, and Tassin perched on the edge of the bed to gaze at Sabre while Tarl continued his examination.
"How is he doing?"
Tarl shot her an amused glance. "Much the same as he was five minutes ago. He's in shock, and the cyber's compensating. Right now it's dumping blood from his liver and scrubbing adrenalin from his system to slow his heart. That will cause his blood pressure to drop, but it will also slow the drain on his resources. When it's done all it can, I think it'll shut down."
She eyed the flashing control unit. Most of the lights were red. "It did once before, when he was still enslaved by it. He was in a terrible fight, and afterwards all the lights went off for more than a week."
"Yeah, well, this time he'll wake up when he's ready, not when that damned thing decides the host has recovered sufficiently to be a useful tool again."
"You're sure he's going to be all right?"
Tarl nodded, frowning. "I wish I had the equipment to monitor him, though, and the drugs to speed up his healing. His shoulder might be permanently damaged without regeneration agents."
"That was his last battle."
"Still, when Fairen comes to visit I'm going to ask him for a few things. Sabre won't want to have a shoulder that's stiff and aches for the rest of his life, will he?"
She shook her head. "You must fix it."
"I will." He glanced at her, his fingers on Sabre's pulse. "How goes your war?"
She sighed. "I have sent messages. Now it just remains to be seen who will obey my orders."
****
Sabre drifted back to consciousness, becoming aware that he lay on a soft bed, sheets covering him. His shoulder ached, and tingles of pain came from his arms and thighs. His head pounded and his neck throbbed. He consulted the cyber's data, which informed him that his bio-status was at forty-nine per cent. An amber warning light flashed, indicating dehydration. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he swallowed, grimacing as he tasted bile.
Opening his eyes, he stared at the swathes of rich blue cloth above him, letting his gaze drift down to the carved wooden posts that held it up, then over to a hunched form beside his bed. Tarl sat in a cushioned chair with his chin sunk on his chest, his eyes closed. He shifted, and a soft snore escaped him. Late afternoon sunlight poured in through the windows of a sumptuous bed chamber, gilding ornate carved furniture and thick woollen rugs. Gold-framed portraits and landscapes hung on the grey stone walls, and a breeze swayed the heavy blue velvet curtains that framed the tall diamond-paned windows.
"Tarl." It emerged as a whisper, and Sabre coughed, trying to summon some spit into his mouth. "Tarl."
The cyber tech's eyes opened, then
his head jerked up and he winced, rubbing his neck. He glanced at Sabre and smiled. "You're awake."
"No kidding. I need some water."
Tarl poured a cup full, and Sabre pushed himself up against the mound of cushions behind him, taking it from Tarl when he would have held it to the cyber's lips.
"I don't need you to damn well feed me, you moron."
"Bud, you lost a hell of a lot of blood."
Sabre drained the cup and held it out. "You don't say? More. Where's Tassin?"
Tarl refilled the cup. "Attending to affairs of state. Seems she's going to be busy for a while, sorting out Torrian's mess."
"And Torrian?"
"She sent a message to her generals in his army. Won’t be long before he’s defeated and captured, then Sharmian will bring him here in chains."
"That should be good."
The ex-tech leant closer, his eyes on the brow band. "How do you feel?"
"Forty-nine per cent."
"That's not what I asked."
"But it's what you wanted to know."
Tarl sighed. "A simple 'fine', or 'okay' would have done."
"How about 'shitty'?"
"That will do."
Sabre glanced down at the cast on his shoulder and right arm, which was strapped to his chest. "You like tying me up, don't you?"
"You have a broken shoulder, bud."
"Ah, I thought it felt a bit funny."
"A bit funny?"
"Yeah, it didn't work too well for the second half of the fight."
Tarl shook his head. "What happened?"
"A miscalculation." Sabre drained the cup and held it out again.
Tarl refilled it. "What happened?"
"I did a wall-walk with a backflip and hit an overhead cable."
"And you landed on your shoulder."
"Yeah, and my head, but that bounced."
Tarl snorted and chuckled.
Sabre sipped the water. "How bad is it?"
"Hard to tell without x-rays, but pretty bad, I reckon."
"I bet you can fix it with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers."
"No, I would need regeneration drugs and monitoring equipment."
"Right." Sabre held out the empty cup once more. "I'll ask Fairen to drop some off."
Tarl refilled the cup. "That would be great."
"I’m kidding."
"I'm not. Without the drugs, you may have permanent damage, scarring and a constant ache there, as well as loss of movement and strength. You may even lose some hand function."
"I'm not going to bug Fairen. Besides, I'm done with fighting."
"Fairen wouldn't mind, and you won't like being a cripple."
Sabre sipped the water. "Okay, I'll ask him."
"Good." Tarl glanced at the brow band again. "The cyber shut down for six days; had me a bit worried. It rebooted yesterday, but it didn't try to take over again, did it?"
"Nope. Those shiny girls fixed it good. So I've been out for a week?"
"Yeah. You needed the rest."
"No wonder I'm so damned thirsty."
"If I'd had a drip...."
Sabre sighed. "You can bring me some painkillers. I have one hell of a headache."
"Right." Tarl left, returning a minute later with two pills from the cyber's medical kit. Sabre took them, then handed him the empty cup and slid down in the bed, closing his eyes.
"Thanks. Now you can piss off and let me get some sleep. The cyber flashes a warning light when you're around. Cyber techs set off all my alarms."
"Bullshit."
Sabre smiled.
When Sabre woke again, the room was dark and he was alone, and he used the bracelet to send a brief message to Fairen.
The cyber’s chronometer told him it was almost midday, local time, when Tarl woke him up to inform him that a pile of equipment had materialised in a field close to the castle during the night. A squad of soldiers had hauled it into one of the disused rooms, where the ex-cyber tech had spent three hours setting it up. Tarl led him to the freshly scrubbed room, where a faint scent of antiseptic hung in the air. A sheet of plasfoam covered the floor, and a squat machine he recognised as a control unit interface and scanner stood beside a modern, moulded plastic bench-like bed. A trolley held an assortment of syringes, drugs and instruments, and five floating globes provided light. Sabre lay down, and Tarl hooked up his equipment, totally engrossed.
Sabre watched him hum around the room, adjust cables and plug equipment into a neosin power pack by the wall.
"Back in your element, aren't you, bud? Another cyber to fix."
Tarl approached the bed, a cable in one hand. "I could always leave you a cripple."
"Nah, you'd never do that. Can't stand to see high-tech machinery damaged, can you?"
Tarl sat on the stool beside the bed, putting down the cable. "If high-tech machinery was all you were, I'd shut you down and stuff you in a damned cupboard, you annoying bastard. And you want to be fixed, otherwise you wouldn't have asked Fairen to send this stuff."
"You're right, I do. Why be crippled, when with a few injections and some electric shocks I can be as good as new?"
Tarl plugged the end of the cable into the cyber's access port. "Lucky for you. Pity I can't upload a new personality while I'm at it."
Sabre chuckled, and Tarl turned to the monitor, tapped some keys and read the information that scrolled up the screen.
"Okay, well, you're at fifty-one per cent now -"
"I know that."
"Right." Tarl tapped some more keys, and frowned. "Uh oh..."
"What?"
"According to this, the cyber is registered to Myon Two."
"Yeah, those bastards changed it."
"Doesn't seem like a good idea to me."
"So change it."
Tarl shook his head. "I can't. I'd need the super user codes for this control unit."
Sabre frowned. "Then I'll change it."
Tarl shot him a surprised look. "Can you do that?"
Sabre closed his eyes, concentrating on the cyber's database. It appeared in the darkness of his mind, and he ordered it to purge the data. The information scrolled up, the registered owner's field now blank. It scrolled up again, and the control unit's serial number was blank. It scrolled up once more, and all the control codes and passwords were gone, leaving the entire registration database empty.
"Wow," Tarl muttered.
Sabre opened his eyes. "How's that?"
Tarl stared at the monitor, which displayed the same information Sabre had just seen in his mind. "Bloody amazing."
"Now no part of me belongs to anyone else."
"Great. Let's get you fixed up then."
Tarl attached a drip to Sabre's arm and injected it with several drugs, which he said were vitamins, DNA-activating agents to speed up his healing, and a mild sedative. Tarl cut away the cast and undid the strapping, and Sabre closed his eyes while the tech worked. He opened them again when Tarl swung the arm of a squat instrument next to his stool over the cyber's shoulder and peered through the round lens on the end of it.
"Yep, it's broken all right," he said. "Smashed, in fact. Worse than I thought. The ball of the joint is snapped off. The barrinium doesn't extend to the end of it. It's one of the weaknesses R and D was never able to fix. They would have had to replace the entire joint, which would have cost too much. The shaft is broken into three, no, four pieces. You must have fallen on it really hard."
Sabre stared at the ceiling. "Not really. I only fell about four metres. It was just the awkwardness of it, and the angle."
"You didn't break your fall with your arms?"
"Couldn't. I hit the floor almost head first, and I was spinning."
"Right. Well it's a good thing you asked Fairen to send this stuff, otherwise you'd be permanently crippled."
Sabre closed his eyes. "Just fix it."
Tarl pulled the equipment trolley to the side of the bed and filled syringes, laying them out in a row. "The ligamen
ts are torn as well, so I'm going to have to do two lots of regeneration agents, one for the bones and one for the ligaments. You really need an operation; some of those chips are floating."
"Check my neck too, will you? It twinges."
Tarl moved the disk-lens, frowning. "Yeah, you've cracked two vertebrae." He moved the lens again. "And your collar bone. You did a good job."
Sabre sighed as a wave of lethargy washed over him, from the sedative, he assumed. Tarl picked up a syringe and pushed the needle into Sabre's shoulder, peering through the lens as he guided it to the damaged area.
Tarl watched the dark fluid seep into Sabre's joint, amazed that the cyber did not even flinch as he probed deeper with the needle, injecting two more damaged areas. The syringe emptied, and he pulled the needle out, picking up another full one. The regeneration drug would only remain active for about five minutes, and the shocks had to be given during that time. He pumped the drug into two more damaged areas, then picked up a syringe containing the bone regeneration drug and probed into the cracked areas, hoping the floating bits would rejoin when he administered the shocks. Sabre appeared to have fallen asleep, and he injected a second dose. He picked up the tiny paddles and placed them against the cyber's shoulder, shocking the joint.
When he had given the requisite three shocks, he glanced at Sabre. The cyber's eyes were open, and he stared at the ceiling again with a dull, blank look. Tarl examined the joint with the lens, finding that ninety per cent of the damage was repaired, then started on Sabre's neck. He marvelled afresh at how the cyber lay there without a word of complaint or any sign of pain while he stuck the big needles deep into the cracks in his bones, then shocked the area again. When he had fixed the broken collar bone, Tarl examined the rest of his patient, who had hairline cracks in his hand and finger bones, doubtless from punching armour-clad knights. More hairline fractures ran through the bones of his feet, and one toe was broken.
The Cyber Chronicles VII - Sabre Page 17