Cronus

by K. A. Finn

  He hates the fact that everything Sayber said after hearing about Gryffin's deteriorating health had gone in one ear and out the other. He doesn't want to care about his brother, but it seems he does - and that's really irritating him.

  Sayber points to the file on the screen and moves back to lean against the window. 'That's everything Milla downloaded on Gryffin before we left.'

  Bray ignores his captain as he reads the information. Every sentence fills him with more dread. 'Chayse and Milla have any ideas how to fix him?'

  Sayber shakes his head. 'Nope. They're stumped. Gryffin was pretty much undergoing constant testing while he was unconscious. Bottom line is the implant in his brain is failing which is having a knock on effect on the rest of his components.'

  Bray grunts as he examines the readings. 'Milla thinks there's something hidden in his programming that stopped him from going through the Port, but nothing showed up.'

  'And they looked, believe me they looked. Whatever it is, it's well and truly hidden.'

  Bray scratches his jaw as he reads through the data. 'It's all down to the control implant. If we can remove it, or repair it, all the other problems should be easily fixed.'

  'Why do I get the impression it's not that simple?'

  'If it was, the Scientist would have done it by now. Maybe the Foundation have had more luck. There could be something on their system that could help.'

  Sayber pulls up another chair and sits beside Bray. He strokes his goatee and looks down at the floor. 'You're serious about going to Earth to get Garvan, aren't you?'

  Bray glances up at him. 'Just say what you're thinking.'

  'I know he's your mate, but...'

  'You're not here to help him, right?'

  Sayber smiles and nods. 'Got it. I don't know much about the man, but I doubt he'd want you risking your ass to get him out.'

  'It's not his call. I don't answer to him.'

  'True, but you answer to me.'

  'So you're going to order me to come back with you?'

  'I shouldn't have to. It's a damn shame about Garvan, it really is. But it's done. What we need to do is get the hell out of here in one piece. If we manage to take out a Foundation ship or two before we go, fair enough. I'm not going to put two ships at risk to save one man.'

  Bray smirks and meets Sayber's eyes. 'That's exactly what you did when you came here to get me, Captain. Well, two men but same difference.'

  Sayber clenches his jaw, clearly irritated at the truth of Bray's statement.

  'Listen, I'm not asking for your help to get Garvan out, but I have to go. I'm not leaving him there to be used as a test subject for the Foundation. I'm also not going without Cronus. The information on that ship could put a stop to all the cyborgs. We need to get her going and bring her across the border with us.'

  'This is about Gryffin, isn't it?'

  Bray makes a face. 'Not entirely. Believe me, there's no love lost between us. It's the information I want.' He silently apologises to his mother for the lie. Just another thing she'd be less than happy with him about. Since his parents' death, he hadn't exactly done many things to make them proud of him. Illegal fighting rings, being arrested, drugs, more fighting. Not model son kind of stuff. Dismissing his brother so easily is just another thing to add to the list.

  Sayber frowns at him. 'What good will that do?'

  'A hell of a lot if the Foundation uses the data.' He swivels his chair around to face Sayber. 'Think about it, sir. They've somehow figured out how to fix the problem with the control implant. Now there's nothing stopping them from starting a production line. They didn't think twice about fitting a faulty implant to hundreds of prisoners. What's to stop them from fitting a fully operational one? Within a few months, they could have an army of Gryffin's ready to forcefully take over the Outer Sector.'

  'Yeah, but the prisons are cleared.'

  'Not the ones in Foundation space.'

  'They're small fry compared to the ones we took out. There's only a few hundred prisoners in total.'

  'That's all they need. If every one of them, or even ninety-percent of them survive, that means a lot of trouble for us.'

  'Damn it.' Sayber scratches his head as he looks at the data on the screen. 'You may have a point about helping Gryffin.'

  Bray smirks. 'You want to save your old mate now?'

  'Not top of my list. I'm not going to deny he's a definite asset to our common cause. If they launch this army, we could very well need him.'

  Bray points to Milla's last line of text in the report. 'If we're going to do this, we can't hang around. He's got a few weeks left, tops. The longer he's left to deteriorate, the more damage is done to his body.'

  Sayber curses and looks up at the ceiling. 'Can't believe I'm going to save his Nomad ass, yet again. Just for once I'd like to kill him. I created the Hunters to wipe out the Nomad. We're meant to be hunting them, not helping them. If we let his programming fail now, it'll save us a hell of a lot of trouble when we face the Nomad again in battle.' Sayber smiles apologetically at Bray. 'You know what I mean.'

  Bray nods and looks back at the screen. 'I understand.' Sayber is right. Once the Foundation issue is taken care of, there'll be another big problem to face. With the Sector free from the Foundation, the Nomad and Hunters will be back to their rightful positions — on opposite sides.

  The feud between Sayber and Gryffin is carved in stone. Just because they're working together for the moment, doesn't erase the past. Sayber betrayed Gryffin's trust when they served together. Just as Klay and Rayde did. Gryffin will never forget that and Sayber will never step aside and let the Nomad take the Sector. Bray has to accept the fact that, sooner or later, he'll have to face Gryffin from the opposite side. It's not something he's looking forward to. 'The Hunters will give as good as we get, sir.'

  'Yeah, well we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now... ' Sayber scratches his cheek as he focuses on a spot on the wall. 'Damn it. Let's find out what the Foundation knows. I'd be fairly ticked off with myself if I didn't try to irritate the Foundation while I'm here.'

  4

  DIXON SPACE STATION

  Bray pushes the screen away and rubs his eyes, wincing when the pressure sends a wave of pain through his head. He honestly doesn't know how Gryffin puts up with the damn mod around his eye. The fact his brother has had an eyepiece for nearly twenty years doesn't give him much comfort. Getting used to the pain isn't the same as not having it in the first place. He can handle the piece on his chest. He wants rid of the eyepiece though. If he has to tear the Foundation ship apart he'll do it. The information they need is somewhere in there and he's going to find it.

  They've been trolling through the data from the Foundation ship continuously since they arrived. The plus side is that they are learning quite a bit about the systems on Cronus. The negative is that they have only managed to scrape the surface of the data.

  With the majority of the files they need still fighting any serious attempt to access them, they've focused on the smaller unit they found in the med bay. The Scientist's dated unit didn't put up any barriers when they accessed it. Unfortunately, most of the files on the system are also dated. There were a few schematics from some of the newer models and it's these files they're concentrating on.

  As a lot of the data is beyond Bray's knowledge of cybernetics, the Dixon's were able to fill in the gaps, helping him get through the information. He was hoping to find something - ideally about a kill switch. It's probably asking for too much, but he's still going to look. If they're to put a stop to the Foundation cyborgs they'd need a miracle.

  Taking Cronus and the lab full of technicians will have slowed them down quite a bit, but no one was under the illusion they had done anything more than just delay the inevitable. The Foundation would carry out their plans. Bray and the others just had to find some way of stopping them before too many people lost their lives.

  People like Garvan.

  Knowing that his friend i
s more than likely going to be first on the mod list when the Foundation gets themselves sorted, gives Bray an extra kick to keep searching the files. Not that he needs the kick. He's all too aware what's at stake.

  'I think I may have found something,' Felix shouts from the head of the table, startling everyone.

  'Put it on the big screen.' For once, Felix does what he's asked without complaining. Bray studies the information, but all he can see is a garbled mess of nonsense. 'What am I missing?'

  Felix's fingers dance over his screen for a few minutes. 'I've highlighted the section.'

  Bray reads through the data and curses.

  'What?' Sayber asks.

  Bray points to a line of text at the bottom of a page filled with numbers. 'Felix is right. The Foundation figured out how to fix the problem with the control implant.'

  Sayber leans forward to get a better look. 'You mean the thing that's going to go pop in Gryffin's head?'

  Bray rolls his eyes at Sayber, regretting it when the pain shoots through his head. 'Dumbing it down, yes.'

  'Not sure how that's going to help us. Gryffin and the Nomad, yes, but definitely not us.'

  Felix walks around the table, tutting loudly. 'Do you all have blinkers on or something? With a little preparation, and the right tools of course, this information can be used to stabilise the control implant.'

  Bray flops back against the chair. 'Are you sure?'

  Felix nods. 'A full overhaul is a bit more than I could carry out here with my team, but with help from a team who are more familiar with the implants we can do it.'

  Sayber leans forward on the table. 'I didn't think it was possible to stabilise it?'

  'Neither did I,' Bray agrees. 'This is really big, Felix.'

  He puffs out his chest and holds on to his lapels as he smiles widely. 'Why thank you. You're still missing the biggest bit. This information can also be used to remove the implant. In time, the cyborgs can be fully human again.'

  Bray stares at the screen in silence. Not for one minute did he even consider being able to undo the work the Scientist had carried out. He's only been like this for a few months, but he'd give anything to be one-hundred-percent human again. And Gryffin... it would be a new start for him. A chance to live the life he missed out on. He looks back at the data. 'Are you sure about all of this? It says all the implants can be removed?'

  Felix shakes his head. 'Not quite. It says nothing about removing everything. What it does say is how the parts were fitted in the first place and exactly what they do, down to the last detail. Well, it cross-references other files that we don't yet have access to. If we could get that data we could potentially work backwards and remove the other implants. As for the control one...'

  He glances back at the screen and his frown deepens. 'It really depends on how long it's been fitted. With the new colony cyborgs, it's a possibility. You too... well, if you have a control implant, but Gryffin...' He shakes his head and meets Bray's eyes. 'Twenty-odd years is a long time to live with something. I'm confident it can be stabilised and possibly even decreased in size. I can't say whether he'd survive without it in some form or another. I'd have to examine him alongside the data. As for his other implants, he'd need a lot of reconstructive surgery, both internally and externally, but it looks like it can be done.'

  'If we can access the files,' Bray adds.

  Sayber runs a hand over his goatee. 'So, we can just take this data back, whizz him through surgery and make him human again?'

  Felix rolls his eyes. 'You and your inane questions. No, it would take a few months to regenerate tissue needed to replace the implants. He'd be out of it for the best part of a year, maybe longer.'

  Sayber shrugs. 'Not an issue for me. It'll give the Hunters time to take over.'

  Even though Sayber's talking about destroying his brother's livelihood, Bray still smiles. Gryffin would be mostly human again... and so would he. He runs his finger across the throbbing implant on his face. This information offers him the chance to get rid of his own mods.

  'So, what's the plan?' Bray asks.

  Felix sits next to his wife and, in a rare show of tenderness, takes her hand in his. 'Well, I doubt you have the necessary equipment in the Outer Sector to carry this out, and I certainly don't have the expertise.

  'So there are two options — one, we move the station and everyone on it through the Port and we have a vacation in the Outer Sector or, two, you bring the cyborgs to us along with the relevant personnel.' He sits back in his high-backed chair. 'For the record, this station hasn't moved farther than a sedate stroll for decades, just like Evie and me. Probably best to rule that one out.'

  Bray laughs, the sound echoing around his skull. 'You want me to go back to the Outer Sector and bring Gryffin here? Are you crazy? If the Foundation even gets a whiff of him, he'll be back working for them before we can stop it.'

  'If you've fixed the implant, that won't matter.'

  Bray looks at Felix as if he's grown another head. 'Gryffin isn't going to consider coming here. And even if he did, his programming is altered. There's no telling what will happen if we try to take him through the Port. He could easily turn on us, killing us all before we even complete the journey. Bringing him across will give One exactly what he wants.'

  'Not quite,' Sayber says. 'One wants Gryffin in the Outer Sector - you said it yourself. Having him over here might just scupper his plans.' He smiles and clasps his hands behind his head. 'Sounds like music to my ears.'

  Bray looks around the table of people and can see they agree with Felix and Sayber. 'I... I could be altered too. What if bringing him here... I don't know, triggers something in the two of us. I don't want to go up against my brother - not like that.'

  Sayber turns in his seat to face him. 'We will all be here to make sure that doesn't happen. Felix is right. As much as I hate to admit it, Gryffin has to come to Earth.'

  'Okay, so say I agree - we've got no way of contacting Ultar.'

  Felix slowly nods his head. 'Bray's right. The Foundation still control all transmissions entering and leaving the Sector.'

  Bray rubs his forehead but it just makes the pain worse. 'Actually, we hold the other side of the main Port.'

  Felix's eyes widen. 'Why the hell didn't you say earlier? We could use that to our advantage.'

  'How does that help if the Foundation hold this side?' Sayber asks.

  Felix touches the side of his nose. 'Can't give away trade secrets, Captain. Give me a few hours. I may be able to figure something out.' He shuffles towards the door, pausing before he leaves. 'Heath, why aren't you following me?'

  The young man mutters something under his breath before obediently following Felix from the room.

  ULTAR

  Gryffin sits up, clutching his head and roaring in pain. He falls off the bunk, landing on his injured leg. The pain from that is no match for whatever's going on in his head. He buries his fist in his hair as another vice of pain tightens around his head. Someone tries to pry his hand away but he's sure if he lets go his head will split open.

  'Gryffin! Can you hear me?' He recognises Desyl's voice but there's only enough air in his lungs to scream.

  As quickly as the pain started it fades, leaving him on the floor with his bad leg twisted awkwardly underneath him.

  Gryffin slowly lifts his head to look at Desyl. The Nomad is on all fours on the ground in front of him. 'Sir. What happened?'

  He reaches up and wipes blood from his nose. 'He died.'

  'Who, sir?' Desyl asks.

  'One of the cyborgs. Stefan.'

  He closes his eye as Desyl makes the call to check on the cyborg. A minute later he crouches down to Gryffin's level again. 'They just checked his room. He's dead.' Desyl helps lift Gryffin back on to the cot. He kneels in front of him to check his leg brace. 'I've put in a call to Milla. You landed pretty hard on that. Might have done some damage.' Desyl sits on the end of the cot and looks sideways at Gryffin. 'You felt him die, didn't you, sir?'


  Gryffin nods once. 'The link between us is getting stronger. Or I'm getting weaker.' He leans back against the bars and looks over at Desyl. 'I'm not fit to be High Commander. Damn it, I shouldn't still be in command of Ares. You need to take over.'

  'The last thing the Nomad need now is a new leader. You need to stay put, sir.'

  Milla arrives, ending the conversation. Desyl's right. The Nomad need stability. The problem is that's the one thing he can't offer.

  'I've just heard from the team about Stefan. I'm afraid he suffered from a terminal aneurysm. Desyl said you felt it?'

  'Stabbing pain in my head for a few seconds then it stopped.'

  Milla frowns as she places her bag on the floor of the cell. 'You landed on your leg?'

  'Landed hard,' Desyl answers before he can say anything.

  'Well, let's see what damage you did to yourself.' She unlocks the metal brace and unfastens the side of his trouser leg to expose the dressing over the metal section. He doesn't need to be a medic to know he's messed it up again. Blood is seeping through the dressing. 'Damn it. Right, well, this will need a bit more than my basic trusty bag can offer. Good thing I brought the 'Extreme Gryffin patch-up kit'.

  'You're kidding, right?' Desyl says as he looks down at the case.

  She points to the writing on the lid. 'Nope. I also have a 'Gryffin nearly killed himself again' kit. Since working with you louts I've had to upgrade my field kit.'

  'Yeah. I probably don't blame you,' Desyl says as he drags a chair into the cell for Milla to sit on.

  'Trousers off and lie back on the bed. I mean Gryffin, not you Desyl,' she adds with a smile.

  'Glad you said that before I stripped.' Desyl helps him to his feet and holds him up as Gryffin pushes his trousers down, carefully avoiding the growing patch of blood, then flops back on the bed, exhausted by the simple task. Milla snaps on a pair of gloves and cuts the bandage off. 'So, exactly what did you feel when Stefan died?'