Cyborg Legacy: A Fallen Empire Novel

by Lindsay Buroker

  A large room full of cabinets, workstations, and laboratory equipment opened up around them. A single door stood closed at one end. Several half-started projects lined the countertops, a mix of mechanical gadgets and liquids in high-tech chemistry apparatuses that Jasim couldn’t name. Bags of powders and dark bottles of liquids rested here and there, labels warning of toxic and extremely dangerous contents. The sight sent a chill through Jasim. Was this where the killer manufactured his poisons? Poisons specifically designed to kill cyborgs?

  As Leonidas walked toward a row of refrigeration units in the back, Jasim’s comm made a feeble beep.

  “Maddy?” he asked, glancing toward the row of statistics scrolling down his faceplate to affirm that someone had indeed opened communications.

  A garbled stream of nonsense sounded in his ear.

  “Uh, can you repeat that, please?” Remembering that some kind of sensor shielding had kept the ship from detecting the facility, Jasim moved directly under the open shaft. Would he have to climb out to speak with her?

  “…message… your friend.” That was Maddy, but her voice remained garbled. “The skip…”

  “McCall sent more information?”

  “Trans… receive?”

  “I haven’t received anything.” Jasim started to tell Leonidas that he needed to climb out, but his display flashed, alerting him to a file received. “Never mind. I got it.”

  “…working… tassels. Out.”

  The comm fell silent.

  “An update?” Leonidas asked, now walking along one of the counters, examining but not touching the equipment and projects lined up along it.

  “On your hat? I believe so, but more importantly, McCall sent some more information.” Jasim murmured a command to open the file.

  “I am expecting a very grandiose hat.”

  “Good, because Maddy doesn’t do understated or subtle.” Jasim skimmed the words that came up, enlarging them to fill more of his faceplate. “It’s a text file. About Dufour. McCall found birth information and, hm. That would explain why he hates cyborgs.”

  “Share it,” Leonidas said.

  “Terrance Dufour, son of Mary and Gabin Dufour, born in—damn, he’s only nineteen years old? Can that be right?” Jasim looked around the laboratory at all the supplies and equipment, little of which he could have identified without labels.

  “He may not be the only person involved.”

  “Right. Anyway, it says his father was a technician who worked for the empire for many years but then joined the Alliance and became an officer in their fleet when the war started. His wife had died years earlier in the chaos at—ah, she was at the Perun Arcade Massacre, a teacher trying to get the students to leave before things escalated.”

  Leonidas sighed. “That event created a lot of Alliance loyalists.”

  “Yes, so Terrance would have just been a kid for that, and then… he was fourteen when his father was killed. At Red Dawn Station.” The more Jasim read, the more he suspected this Terrance Dufour was the only person involved, or at least was the person spearheading things.

  “The battle for it? I was there. A lot of us were.”

  “The files doesn’t say how exactly the father died,” Jasim said, “but if one of us, or a squadron of our people, was responsible, that could explain why Dufour has a vendetta against us now.”

  “Yes.”

  “It probably has nothing to do with getting rich selling our implants. I bet he’s only doing that to fund everything else. Sir…” Jasim closed his eyes. He didn’t want to whine, but all of his desire for avenging his fallen brethren was bleeding out of him. Yes, nineteen was considered an adult, both in what remained of the empire and also on the new Alliance planets, but he remembered how stupid he’d been at nineteen. Hells, that was when he’d signed up for the cyborg surgery, a choice he’d soon thereafter come to regret. “I don’t want to kill a teenage kid,” he said quietly.

  Leonidas did not respond. Maybe he was too busy thinking about how he’d come along on this mission with a pansy. Dufour had proven himself an enemy by murdering cyborgs long after the war ended and treaties had been signed. Jasim should simply accept that this had to be done, that the threat had to be ended.

  Still, he found himself blurting, “Maybe we can just arrest him.”

  “To be thrown into what prison?” Leonidas asked quietly. He didn’t sound cold and unsympathetic, but he also didn’t sound like he would yield in this—he wouldn’t leave someone out here who was hunting their kind.

  “We could take him to a jail on Perun. The empire, even if Perun is all that’s left of it, and it isn’t really our empire, should be willing to incarcerate someone who’s been killing former imperial soldiers. One was even killed on Perun.”

  “The Alliance has an extradition treaty with Perun. If his father was an officer, he would be entitled to an Alliance citizen’s rights. They would take him back to stand trial on an Alliance planet. And—” Leonidas’s voice grew softer, “—they would let him walk away. There might not even be a trial.”

  Jasim’s shoulders slumped. “Right, and Dustor certainly wouldn’t care—I think all they’ve got are debtors prisoners here anyway. You’re shot for greater crimes. Damn, if we could lock him up, and he wasn’t a threat anymore, that would be ideal.”

  “We can decide what to do with him after we find him.” Something about the firmness in Leonidas’s voice suggested he still thought that a blazer bolt to the forehead would be the best way to deal with the kid. “I have a feeling he’s not here.”

  “Oh?” Jasim looked toward the still-closed door of the lab.

  “I think he would have gone out to check on that pirate fight—and the drones chasing off your ship—if he had been here. This could just be his manufacturing facility.” Leonidas looked grimly toward the counters.

  “He had his mail brought here.”

  “Business address.”

  “What if we destroy the facility then?” Jasim asked. “That could keep him from manufacturing more poison, at least for a time.”

  “But only for a time. If he did this once, he could do it again. Also, I haven’t seen the needles yet or anything that looks like the bronze drone.”

  “What should we do then?”

  “Finish looking around. If he’s not here, we may find clues to where he is. If we find some of the drones that have been delivering the poison, I’ll be happy to destroy them. I’m not opposed to blowing up the rest of the facility, either, but let’s see if any people are here first and gauge whether doing so would truly help keep the rest of the cyborgs alive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  • • • • •

  The underground facility was creepy. Jasim doubted fearless former soldiers were supposed to find things creepy, but he did, nonetheless. Once they left the lab, entering dark sandstone tunnels, there wasn’t any light. Faint clinks and thunks sounded in the distance, and he didn’t know if they were security constructs, poised to attack, or if the place had a noisy HVAC system. Air turned on with a hiss, blowing from vents in the walls. His suit monitors did not report anything inimical coming out, but Jasim could imagine their teenage mad scientist gassing intruders as part of his security system.

  Leonidas led the way, despite the handful of offers Jasim had now made, offering to lead. Was it just because Leonidas considered himself someone who led—always—as well as giving commands? Or was it out of a lack of trust? Was there a question in Leonidas’s mind that Jasim would do the right thing if he came face to face with the murderer first?

  He thought he’d handled himself adequately with the pirates and the bikers on the station, but maybe Leonidas felt otherwise, or still remembered him as the kid who’d tried to weasel his way out of the military. Maybe nothing Jasim did here or anywhere else would change his former commander’s opinion. Or maybe there was nothing to change—maybe Leonidas’s opinion was the correct one. Jasim’s suggestion that they capture the cyborg murderer inst
ead of killing him might have only reinforced it, that he wasn’t suited to be a soldier—and never had been.

  Leonidas paused at doorways, searching storage and equipment rooms, as if he sought some further clue or advantage to use on their enemy. Maybe he did.

  “Sir?” Jasim asked.

  “What?” Leonidas stepped out of an empty room. A lot of the rooms were empty or sparsely furnished. Maybe Dufour had bought the place used from some other mad scientist, one with more belongings.

  “I never got a chance to say… back when I came to your office with Captain Goldkorn… I shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have asked to get out.”

  Leonidas peered into another room and did not respond. Maybe he didn’t care. He continued to the next room.

  “That stuff about being depressed… it was true, I guess, but it wasn’t anything worse than a lot of the men were dealing with. I just hated the killing. I didn’t have the stomach for it. I didn’t like much about military life, as I learned too late to change my mind, but the killing was the worst. Looking at the sightless eyes of someone who’d just been alive, someone you had shot, someone with a family back home. It had me hating life, hating myself. I questioned why I had the right to my life when I was taking it from others, and… Well, there were a lot of reasons I wanted out. But looking back, I should have dealt with it. Endured until things were over, one way or another. I’m glad I survived the war, though when I’m not being selfish, I admit I’m not sure it’s fair that I did when others who did more, others who were heroes and had a real love for life, didn’t make it out.”

  “Is this the appropriate time for discussing this?” Leonidas asked.

  “Probably not, sir. I tried to bring it up back on the ship, when we were sparring, but… it’s easier to talk to your back than your face.”

  The darkness and their armor helped. It meant that even if Leonidas looked back at him, Jasim wouldn’t see what was in his eyes.

  They walked up a set of stairs. The clinks were growing louder. Jasim still couldn’t tell what they signified, but they were definitely getting closer to them.

  “Not everybody is cut out to be a soldier, Antar,” Leonidas said. “Sometimes, that’s not something you figure out until after you get in.”

  “I wish I’d figured it out before signing on for the cyborg surgery—and the twenty-year commitment. Before that, I’d never even seen battle though. I worked in the supply room in my first unit, ordered parts. Soldiering wasn’t so bad then, even if it wasn’t my dream job. It was peaceful after the streets.”

  Leonidas did not respond. Jasim wasn’t sure what he’d expected him to say, or hoped he would say. That Jasim wasn’t a coward? That he hadn’t been an embarrassment to the Corps? That he was a good man?

  He sighed. As Leonidas had said, this wasn’t the time for this.

  The next door, one to their right side at the top of the stairs, did not open when Leonidas stood in front of the sensor. He waved his hand, but nothing happened. He punched the panel with his fist, startling Jasim. The door issued a peeved hiss and did not open.

  “I’ll get it, sir.” Jasim gripped the door with both hands and forced it open.

  Lights came on, revealing a big bedroom with an office area and decorations all over the walls. Posters from some of the popular vid releases of the last few years. There was a drum set in a corner with a mural of a band stuck to the wall behind it. The bed didn't look like it had ever been made, and rumpled clothes piles scattered around the room suggested the owner should do laundry more often. Overall, it looked like a kid’s room. Even the office part. Most of the surface of the desk was covered with models and toys.

  Leonidas walked slowly to the desk and picked up a model being constructed from interlocking blocks. It appeared to be a spaceship or rocket.

  “Zizblocks,” Leonidas said, an odd note in his voice.

  “Sir?”

  Leonidas set the model back down. “Prince Thorian used to build things with them.”

  “Oh.” Jasim had never even seen the prince in person. “I didn’t realize you knew him, sir.”

  “For a short time. I haven’t heard from him in a while.” Was that regret in his voice?

  Jasim couldn’t guess at the meaning of it. He remembered Emperor Markus coming to talk to the unit once, but he hadn’t stayed long, and his son—there had been two sons then—hadn’t been there.

  “It is unfortunate,” Leonidas said, a distant look in his eyes as he gazed around the room, “that children often suffer the most in war.”

  Jasim had a feeling he was thinking of someone besides Dufour, but was relieved to hear the sentiment from him. “I agree, sir. And they grow up full of hatred, full of seeds of bitterness that will germinate one day.”

  Leonidas looked at him. “Germinating seeds, Antar? Is that symbolism? You should be a teacher.”

  Jasim felt his cheeks warm. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  But Leonidas thumped him on the arm as he headed for the door, adding, “Or perhaps a poet.”

  “I don’t think that pays real well, sir.”

  “Probably about the same as teaching,” Leonidas said dryly.

  Jasim started to turn after him, but something sticking out from under a paper on the desk caught his eye. He stepped over to see what it was. The paper held directions to assembling the model spaceship. He moved it, and his breath caught.

  Eight needles lay in a row on the corner of the desk. They were identical to the one Jasim had found in Banding’s pawnshop and to the one that had protruded from that drone on Primus 7.

  “Sir,” he whispered and crouched for a closer look, trying to tell if poison gleamed on the needles’ tips.

  They appeared bare. For now. Did their presence here mean that the poison was stored in this room too? And what about the drones? Was there a storage cabinet full of them somewhere?

  Leonidas returned to Jasim’s side, looking grimly at the needles.

  “We might want to search the room more thoroughly,” Jasim said.

  “Perhaps so.”

  Jasim looked under the bed while Leonidas poked through a closet. They searched bookcases full of comics and meatier tomes. The kid had a love for physical media. Jasim wondered if he had been alone since his father died, taking care of himself since age fourteen, much as Jasim had taken care of himself on the streets. Only this kid had done a better job if he’d made enough money to accumulate these belongings and this place—that couldn’t have all been done since he’d started selling cyborg implants.

  “Quit turning him into a person,” Jasim muttered to himself. It would only make it that much harder to do what had to be done. The only logical thing they could do to keep their people safe.

  He pulled a box out from under the bed and peered into it, finding old action figures.

  A distant cry, almost a savage roar, sounded. Jasim dropped the box. Leonidas spun toward the door, though the cry had sounded like it came from somewhere deeper in the facility, on the lower level perhaps.

  “I thought you said our target wasn’t home,” Jasim murmured, rising to his feet.

  “I may have been wrong. Or he may have just arrived and found out about his intruders.” Leonidas strode out of the room.

  Jasim followed, though he wasn’t sure what they’d heard had sounded like the cry of someone who had spotted cyborgs on the security cameras. But if it hadn’t been Dufour, who else could it have been?

  Chapter 14

  Rather than going back down the same stairs they had come up, Jasim and Leonidas found a second set of stairs heading down, and Leonidas did not hesitate to take them. He, too, must have thought the cry had come from somewhere on the lower level. Silence had fallen over the compound again, save for those distant clinking noises, and the cry had not repeated. If he had been alone, Jasim might have believed it had been his imagination.

  They crept into a surprisingly wide and high corridor at the bottom of the stairs, one that loo
ked like it had been designed for vehicles rather than people. It went left and right from the steps, but Leonidas picked the right option without hesitating. Only when they had traveled fifty or sixty feet did he hold up a hand. It was dark, and they were relying again on their night vision, so fine details weren’t visible, but he pointed to a bump on the wall a few inches off the ground. There was a second similar one on the opposite side. He made a point of stepping over the invisible line between them. Jasim did the same.

  There were three more spots like that and no doors until they reached a wide double door in the side wall. Grease spots stained the floor, and Jasim’s armor sensors reported a faint draft stirring the air.

  “Do you think that leads to the drawbridge?” he whispered, pointing past the door and up the passage. He’d gotten turned around and did not know where they were in relation to the entrance.

  “Yes.” Leonidas faced the closed double doors and a control panel next to them. He touched his hand to one of them, though he didn’t force it open. He just stood there.

  Curious, Jasim placed his palm on the door too. Like almost everything else in the compound, it was made of sandstone. Though his tactile senses were dulled by the gauntlet on his hand, he felt faint reverberations through the stone. The clinks he’d been hearing all along. They were louder down here.

  “We forcing it open?” Jasim asked.

  Leonidas tapped a few buttons on the control panel. A retina scanner beam appeared, encountered his faceplate, and flashed red.

  “I believe so,” Leonidas said. “You stand back and be ready to shoot.” He waved Jasim to the wall opposite the doors.

  Leonidas pressed his shoulder against one and heaved. Cyborgs could usually make short work of standard doors, but these heavy stone ones did not budge easily. Finally, something snapped, and a groan sounded as the door inched open.

  Jasim came up behind him, pointing his rifle into the darkness within. Lights came on, illuminating a cavernous space, and he tensed. Since hearing that cry, that human cry, he’d worried about running into more than drones.

  The large space, however, was empty. Some kind of vehicle garage, it must have taken up half of the square footage of the compound, if not more. A few closed rollup doors on the long wall opposite the entrance looked like they could hide hovercraft, autos, or even small ships. The clinking noise seemed to be coming from behind one of them. Some vehicle or machine that had been left running? Perhaps one of the reasons for the fans venting the air. Maybe the kid fixed thrust bikes in his spare time.