The Cyber Chronicles 02: Death Zone

by T C Southwell

  It seemed that for the Oroka, sacrifice was the only acceptable method of execution, and entailed being flung into the pit with the monsters. The meeder had only been for torture, Rai had never intended that it should kill him. That led him to believe that the Oroka deemed it necessary for the sacrificial victim to be perceived to have a chance of survival. Their overdeveloped machismo demanded that a man be respected, even if he was a criminal or an enemy, so he had to be given the illusion of having a chance to fight free. If they flung Sabre into the canyon, he would escape. Rai clearly did not intend that to happen, which made him suspect that if a man was able to survive, the Oroka would be forced to let him live, perhaps even free him.

  Tassin, he thought bitterly, would tell Rai all he needed to know, if he asked her, but Rai considered women too stupid to know anything. Sabre knew he could not see her tortured and remain silent, and the cyber would not allow it, in any case. Once Rai knew what he could do, he would undoubtedly devise a suitable method of sacrifice from which there was no hope of escape. He had to find a way to avoid telling them anything, yet still spare Tassin from torture.

  Sabre turned his attention inwards to the cyber's scrolling readouts and concentrated on communicating with the tiny supercomputer. The crystalline AI weighed five grams, and was located at the centre of the brow band, one of the smallest components in it.

  Tassin looked around as the door of her prison opened, clutching the chain that hung from the collar. Rai scowled at the tatty dress she still wore.

  "Too stupid to know what's good for you, aren't you?"

  Rai strode over to her and ripped the chain from her hands, pulling her to her feet. She kicked him in the shin, and he slapped her hard enough to make her stagger. Gasping, she blinked away tears as he led her from the room, the collar cutting into her neck. She stumbled behind him through the house, and his sons watched them pass with wary eyes. Outside, she trotted to keep up, held onto the chain and wondered where he was taking her. They passed other men going about their business, and she suspected that the women were all chained up in the houses.

  Soldiers saluted Rai as he entered the pillared palace in the centre of the city, and he tugged her through the entrance hall. Brown-robed monks wandered about, their faces blank, and she wondered if this was a palace or a temple, or both. Rai did not slow his pace as he left the main hall and led her down a side passage to a metal-bound door. Thrusting it open, he pulled her into a torture chamber. Sabre lay on a metal table, his ankles and wrists clamped to it.

  "Sabre!" She started towards him, but the chain brought her up short. Sabre stared at the roof with blank eyes, and her heart sank.

  Rai chuckled. "How sweet."

  A cold pang of dread shot through her. "Sabre, what's wrong?"

  He closed his eyes, and Rai chortled again. "It seems your mighty warrior doesn't like being helpless, especially in front of the woman he was supposed to be protecting, and now cannot."

  He tugged on the chain, making her look at him. "You see, he hasn't told me all that I want to know, and I don't think he will, no matter what I do to him. But if I torture you, that'll be different. Not so, prisoner?"

  Rai towed her over to a wall hung with chains and shackled her wrists to it at shoulder height. Tassin's gut clenched with dread, and she cast Sabre a pleading glance.

  Rai grinned. "Be persuasive, my lovely. If you can make him talk now, you'll spare yourself a great deal of pain."

  Sabre's inaction annoyed her, but she refused to give Rai the satisfaction of making her beg. She could withstand a little pain, and Sabre would not allow her to suffer. He seemed oblivious to her fate, however, and she wondered if there was something wrong with him. As Rai knelt to clamp shackles on her ankles, she tried to kick him, and he jumped up and slapped her.

  "Don't anger me, woman, or it'll go worse for you."

  Tassin looked at Sabre again, blinking away fresh tears. The cyber band was full of flashing red lights. She wondered if the two were locked in another titanic struggle for supremacy, perhaps sparked by her prospective torture, but he was too peaceful. Rai fitted the irons onto her ankles and left the room.

  "Sabre!" Tassin whispered. "He's gone! What are you doing? How are we going to get out of this?"

  Sabre ignored her, and Tassin frowned and rattled her chains. He hardly seemed to be breathing, and she had to watch him closely to detect any movement at all.

  Rai returned with a brown-robed priest whose round, piggy eyes flitted over Tassin, his tongue flicking out to lick thick lips. She shuddered and looked away. Rai came over to stand before her, thrusting his face close to hers.

  "You'd better start screaming, my dear. Your protector seems to have fallen asleep from sheer boredom. Perhaps he cares nothing for you after all?"

  Tassin's eyes widened as Rai drew a knife from his belt, and she glanced up at his hard face in disbelief. With a flick of his wrist, he sliced through her dress and into her skin. A line of blood appeared on her belly, and she hissed. He smiled, then went over to the priest and accepted a bottle from him. Tassin glanced at the motionless cyber again.

  He followed her look. "I'm sure your screams will awaken him."

  Rai opened the bottle and shook a grey creature into his palm. She shrank back as he held it towards her, tugged at the chains and tried to squirm away from his outstretched hand. He gripped her waist and pressed the creature to the bloody cut. She gasped as sharp claws gripped her skin, swallowing bile at the sight of the beast clinging to her belly.

  The animal searched for raw flesh, found the cut and started to feed. A lance of unbelievable agony shot through Tassin, and she yelled and struggled, striving to reach the loathsome creature and pluck it from her skin. The manacles cut into her wrists, foiling her attempts to reach the beast, and she writhed, trying to shake it off. It hung on, burrowing into her. Hysteria rose in a tide of mindless terror, and her shrieks echoed around the chamber.

  Sabre remained unmoving, and Rai looked puzzled. He went over and shook him, then beckoned to the monk, who hurried over to examine the prisoner. Tears of pain blurred Tassin's vision, and her screams drowned out the men's words until Rai turned and plucked the creature from her skin, stuffing it back into its bottle.

  "Shut up!" he snarled, striding back to Sabre.

  Tassin sagged, sobbing, as the fiery agony faded to a fierce burning. Blinking the tears from her eyes, she looked at Sabre. The cyber band was black, and his skin looked unnaturally pale. The monk hunted for a pulse in Sabre's neck, his face creased with worry and disbelief. When he looked up at Rai, his round eyes were white-ringed.

  "He's dead."

  A stab of pain impaled Tassin's chest, and she hung her head as fresh tears stung her eyes.

  Rai bent over Sabre, also hunting for a pulse. After a moment he straightened and frowned at the monk. "I would not have thought it possible," he muttered. "A reaction to the drug?"

  The monk shook his head. "Doubtful. I would say that he willed himself to death. A bad omen. Very bad. Norak will be furious."

  Rai paled, shooting Tassin an angry glance, then turned back to the monk. "You don't have to tell him about this. We could tell him that we flung him into the pit with the beasts."

  The plump monk shook his head again, his triple chins wobbling. "No, I won't lie to save your hide, Rai. This was your idea, and a bad one. You should have readied him for sacrifice, not tortured him."

  "He might have been dangerous! We don't know what he could have done, maybe evaded the monsters and won free. That would have been a bad omen too, and we would have had to release him. At least now he's no longer a threat."

  The monk shrugged. "Maybe so, but he might have been as helpless as the next man when faced with those creatures. No excuse will appease Norak now." He turned away. "Dispose of the body. I'll make my report. You'll be disgraced, Rai, so prepare yourself."

  The monk waddled out, and Rai turned to Tassin, his expression murderous. "You caused this, you bitch! It was
to save you that he died!"

  Striding up to her, he gripped her throat and squeezed. Tassin struggled while Rai's face mottled with fury, his eyes like chips of obsidian. The world grew dim, and she sagged. She was hardly aware of the guards who dragged Rai away and thrust him out of the door into the custody of others. Hanging in the chains, she breathed in whooping gasps. A man unshackled her, supported her when she would have collapsed and took hold of the chain around her neck.

  "I'll take this one back to the pen," he said.

  The second warrior nodded, undoing the clamps that held Sabre to the table. Tassin cast a despairing glance at him as she was led out, her heart a leaden lump, her emotions a turmoil of anguish and anger. Was it possible that Sabre was so monumentally stupid that he had willed himself to death in order to save her from torture? Surely it would have been better to have told Rai what he wished to know? Could he have killed himself, with the aid of the cyber? She knew so little about his abilities, and if Rai said Sabre was dead then it must be true. Without him, she had no hope of escaping from this terrible place. How could he abandon her like this?

  Numb with desolation, she followed the soldier through the streets to the cage that held the Andaron girls, where he removed the collar and pushed her inside. Many soft hands guided her to a pile of straw, and she sank down on it as the girls clustered around her to stroke her hair and wipe the tears from her cheeks. Surrounded by sympathy, she bowed her head and wept, which broke down the girls' composure. They joined in, hugging her and each other with wails of misery. The guard glanced around and clicked his tongue in annoyance as he surveyed the huddle of weeping women.

  Chapter Ten

  Sabre floated in the soft arms of darkness, remembering a time when he had done this before. It seemed like only a short while ago that he had hung in this disembodied gloom, neither fully asleep nor awake, unaware of anything except the steady beat of his heart. The control unit prodded his peaceful mind with urgent red flashes that exploded inside his skull, driving him towards wakefulness. Readouts flashed past, many of the indicators red, warning him of a low blood oxygen level and increasing hypoxia. He realised that his lungs burnt, and instinct activated his neck muscles, raising his head from the semisolid substance that blocked his nose and mouth. Air rushed into his lungs, and he relaxed.

  Waking from cold sleep was always painful, and he waited for the stabbing cramps from long disused muscles. Instead, the cyber flashed a warning again, and his lungs spasmed once more. Raising his head, he drew in another gasp. Confused, he struggled through the dragging blackness of cold sleep, his heart speeding up. Again he raised his head to breathe, his inhalations becoming more frequent as his metabolism rose back to normal. Odd sensations impinged upon his waking mind. Something cold and clammy clung to him, and wetness surrounded him.

  A strange bubbling noise accompanied his exhalations, which was not liquid enough to be water. Raising his head to breathe again, he tried to open his eyes and found that something sticky glued them shut. Pulling an arm from the grip of more sucking stickiness, he wiped the goo from his eyes and looked around. He lay face down in mud, his legs and one arm sunk into it. An almost impenetrable darkness surrounded him, relieved by starlight and the dull orange glimmer of a distant city.

  Memories returned in a rush, and he struggled to sit up, pulling his other arm free. Glancing at the city again, he smiled, then grimaced as he realised that his mouth was full of foetid muck. He spat it out, wishing he had water to rinse it. His plan had worked, but going into cold sleep had been risky, since he did not know what these people did with dead bodies. In cold sleep, his physical functions became imperceptible. His heart beat only once a minute and his respirations were even slower. Without modern equipment to detect his brain function, he appeared to be dead. He had fooled them, and they had dumped him in the swamp, as he had thought they would.

  It had seemed unlikely that they would go to the trouble of burying him, and Death Zone monsters did not eat dead meat. The easiest way to get rid of the dead was to throw them here, where the crabs would dispose of them. Lying back in the ooze, he waited for his strength to return. It always took a little time to recover from cold sleep, though not as long as it had taken him to go into it. He found that he was wearing his harness, complete with medical pouch, and marvelled at his luck.

  Evidently the Orokans wanted to be rid of everything that went with him, too. He prompted the control unit for night vision, which it fed directly into his optic nerve, as it did the computer graphics it used to communicate with him. The Orokans had dumped him far out in the swamp, presumably to prevent the stench of his rotting corpse from reaching the town, although the swamp stank pretty badly. Only the half-hearted croaking of a frog and the occasional glug of noxious bubbles rising to the surface broke the silence. He shifted as his limbs sank into the mud again, finding something hard and round under his palm. Glancing down, he recoiled with a curse.

  A half sunken skull grinned up at him, its eye sockets oozing mire like hideous tears, and he scrambled away from it, encountering more muddy, grinning skulls. His attempt to stand up made him sink knee-deep in the sucking ooze, and he was forced to crawl through the skeleton-infested slime as he struggled to escape the macabre graveyard.

  Bony hands clutched at him, and accusing eye sockets wept mud as he wallowed amongst them, his movements enraging the tiny creatures that fed on the corpses. Worms wriggled under his hands and crabs scuttled over him as he crawled through the mire, the stench and gruesome sight of the rotting bodies knotting his stomach. A bevy of crabs scuttled from a half rotten cadaver in his path, and he changed direction to avoid it. The mud sucked at him, making rude, moist noises when he extracted each limb to move it.

  A glance inward at the scanners showed him that millions of minuscule creatures surrounded him, most of which he hoped were harmless. Remembering the grey animal Rai had set on him, he shuddered, crawling over the muck as fast as he could extract his limbs from its sticky clutches. In places he floundered into wetter mud and sank into its foul embrace, freeing himself with difficulty. In drier areas coarse grass sprouted, but no stilt trees grew nearby. He crawled towards the city, glad to leave the graveyard behind, apart from an occasional bone scavengers had dragged from it.

  Swamp gas rose in rude expulsions of noxious foetor, forced to the surface by his movements, and accompanied his slow slither with sounds that might have been heard at a giants' dinner party after they had feasted on beans. The struggle with the muck sapped his strength, and he paused on a patch of firmer ground to rest, eyeing the city. He had not made much progress, since walking on the mud was impossible. Even crawling, his arms and legs sank into the ooze, and he had to tug them free each time.

  The men who had dumped him must have used some sort of smooth-bottomed raft that could skim over the slippery surface, and poled it over the mud. The swamp was certainly an excellent defence. An attacking army would become mired in its sucking embrace and slowed to a crawl, easy targets for the defenders. He looked at the sky, wondering how long it was until dawn. A glance at the cyber's chronometer told him that it was four in the morning. At the rate that he was progressing, he had little chance of freeing Tassin tonight.

  A flashing red light in his mind warned him of danger, and he consulted the scanners. A large, unidentified life form approached him from behind, and he turned to face a flat shape sliding over the ooze, many paddles propelling it. The cyber came to life, filling the quiet swamp with its low drone. The creature raised a blunt, featureless head, turned and slithered away, diving into the sludge. Sabre sighed and quit his soggy island, lowering himself into the ooze again.

  Gearn stopped and gazed at the city crouched in the swamp at the end of the road. His feet ached and his legs trembled with exhaustion after the nonstop march from the women's village. His strengthening spell was useless now that his energy reserves were gone. Lack of sleep made his head pound and his eyes burn, and only the prospect of finding the Q
ueen in some man's boudoir kept him going. The wolf sat on the road and yawned, passing the urge to Gearn, who scowled at him.

  "You'll have to wait in the forest."

  As the animal trotted away, Gearn stifled a yawn and promised himself a week of sleep once they had the Queen. He headed up the road, Murdor tramping behind him. The gladiator's penchant for whistling seemed to have deserted him. The sweltering sun in which they had trudged all day had boiled the urge to be irritating out of him, apparently. As they approached the gates, a pair of stony-faced warriors confronted them, who eyed Murdor with a great deal of wariness.

  "What's your business here, strangers?"

  Gearn pulled out a damp handkerchief and mopped his brow. "Just travellers, seeking a good meal and rest."

  The guard scowled at Murdor. "As long as you have coin, and start no trouble. A meal and a bed you can buy, but don't expect to hire a woman."

  "Oh?" Gearn raised his bushy brows. "Why is that?"

  The sentry thrust out his chin. "'Cause there aren't any."

  "I see. Very well."

  The guards stood aside, and Gearn entered the clean streets of Oroka, ambling towards the heart of it. He wondered how he was going to find the women from the village, and, realising that his chances of stumbling across them by happy coincidence were slim, he entered the next inn.

  Settling at a table, he glanced around at the male crowd that quaffed ale and filled the air with their droning hubbub. The room boasted well-swept floors and freshly scrubbed walls. Even the polished furniture lacked the grubby patina that usually covered the tables of inns. Murdor licked his lips in anticipation as a fresh-faced youth took Gearn's order of ale. When the boy returned with it, the mage detained him.

  "Tell me, lad, are there any women to be found in this town?"