The Cyber Chronicles 06: Warrior Breed

by T C Southwell

  Tassin raised her head to study Sabre's face, her concern for him growing acute. His eyes were closed and he breathed in deep gasps through blue lips. The roaring of the retro-rockets went on and on, the pod vibrating. How much time had passed? Three hours? Four? It did not look like he was going to last much longer, and she wondered what she could do. The temptation to share her air with him was overwhelming. She had no wish to survive him, anyway.

  Turning away, she groped for the helmet's release catch, snapped it open and took a deep breath before she pulled it off. Slipping it over his head, she clipped it to his atmosphere suit's collar and waited, holding her breath. Colour rushed back into his skin, turning his lips a healthy shade of pink. His eyes opened wide, and he stopped breathing while he found the catch and released it. He pulled the helmet off and placed it over her head again.

  "You silly girl," he muttered. "I appreciate it, but that wasn't such a good idea. I'm deeply hypoxic now, and the cyber is pulling out all the stops. That sudden rush of oxygen was almost toxic. Do you understand?"

  She shook her head, biting her lip at the unexpected reprimand.

  "It means my system has adjusted to the low oxygen atmosphere, and one of the things it's done is increase my blood's ability to absorb oxygen in my lungs. Taking such a big breath of normal air overloaded my system for a moment. It has helped, though, thanks."

  The roar of the retro-rockets died away, leaving a deafening silence. Sabre took her hand again and squeezed it.

  "Almost there. We've reached an acceptable re-entry speed; now the autopilot will adjust our trajectory. Not much longer."

  The pod lurched, sending Tassin drifting off the floor, and Sabre pulled her close, fending off the wall that moved towards them. It lurched again, and another wall came at them. Sabre pushed it away with his foot, and they floated in the centre of the pod, drifting towards the far wall. The pod clicked and whirred, making its adjustments. A deep affection for the little craft grew in Tassin, and she silently wished it well in its attempts to save them. The floor rushed up at them again, and Sabre cushioned the impact, letting his knees bend and holding her close.

  "What's happening?" Tassin murmured. "What's it doing?"

  "Adjusting our entry vector with thrusters. By now it will have analysed the planet's atmosphere, and it's adjusting our speed according to its density."

  The pod shuddered, making Tassin glance at Sabre in alarm. He appeared to be half asleep, his eyelids drooping.

  She shook him. "What was that?"

  "It's okay. We bounced on the stratosphere. It's not good, but the pod will adjust and try again."

  The pod lurched on cue, sending them spinning across it, and Sabre fended off the wall, his movements slow. The pod shuddered again, and this time the tremors continued, growing more violent. Sabre smiled and nodded, closing his eyes.

  "We've entered the atmosphere."

  "Stay awake. Stay with me."

  "I'm trying."

  "How long before we land?"

  He shrugged. "That depends on how thick the atmosphere is."

  "Approximately."

  "Somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes."

  The pod's shuddering increased, and the hull made pinging, groaning sounds.

  Tassin shook Sabre again, trying to keep him awake. "Hey, what's happening?"

  "It's... the atmosphere; it's burning the pod's outer skin. But it's designed to... remain intact. Don't worry."

  "I'm more worried about you. Please stay awake. If you fall unconscious, the cyber might take over."

  "I'm... trying."

  "I'm going to put the helmet on you again."

  "No." Sabre shook his head. "You've only got a few minutes of air left."

  "That's all I need."

  "No. I'll be all right."

  "You look awful."

  "I'm okay."

  The broken panel rattled against the wall, and Tassin crouched on the floor beside Sabre as gravity increased. The medical kit vibrated off the couch and fell with a clatter. Sabre's head jerked up and his eyes opened, revealing their glazed expression. His breathing was stertorous now, rapid but laboured, as if he was running out of energy to power his lungs. Realising that he might be unconscious by the time they landed, she shook him.

  "Sabre, how do I open the pod?"

  His eyelids flickered. "Check... the atmosphere first. You... don't want to die from a lungful of toxic gas... most unpleasant."

  "How? How do I do that?"

  "The... panel. Readout... words."

  Tassin turned to the panel and studied the screen in it, which contained strange words.

  "It says E class, prozene additive... two unidentified gasses. What does that mean?"

  "It's... good. Probably."

  "So I should open the door?"

  He nodded.

  Tassin gasped as she was crushed to the floor with bruising force. Pain flared from her ribs, forcing a groan from her as she gritted her teeth. "What's happening now?"

  "Antigravity... unit's kicked in."

  "How do I open the pod?" She shook him. "Sabre? Sabre!"

  Cursing, Tassin struggled to breathe as the extra gravity crushed her lungs. It had been the last straw for Sabre, robbing him of consciousness. The crushing force went on and on, and a red haze obscured her vision, making her fear that she would pass out too, and they would die within reach of safety. She concentrated on clinging to consciousness, noticing that the red light was flashing in her helmet again.

  At last the crushing eased, and she drew in a deep breath, her ribs aching. She waited for the thud or bump that would indicate that they had touched down on solid ground. The pod whirred and clicked, beeping, and she crawled towards the door. An alarm buzzed, and green lights flashed on the panel. The pod whirred again, then the hatch handle turned of its own volition and the door swung open.

  Tassin unclipped her helmet and pulled it off, drawing in a deep lungful of warm, moist air scented with flowers and musk. She turned to Sabre, whose skin had regained its colour, his lips a healthy shade once more. She shook him, alarmed. He appeared to have stopped breathing. She felt for a pulse on the side of his neck, finding a slow one just as he drew in a shallow breath. Relieved, she sat back on her haunches and glanced out of the door at a strange orange sky and grey-blue foliage.

  The landscape moved slowly past, as if they drifted in the wind. Gently undulating meadows of pale yellowish-grey, grass-like vegetation stretched between belts of spreading trees with drooping branches. Long, grey-blue leaves hung from them, relieved by an occasional pinkish flower or fruit, she could not tell which. The tree trunks were a deep burnt umber, and a few taller trees had black trunks and darker leaves, with white flowers or fruit. A third species had pale yellow leaves and striped silver trunks. A few bushes with greyish-green leaves and yellowish puffballs grew at the edge of the copses.

  A distant hooting made her shiver, wondering what manner of beast made it. Her stomach growled. She had been unable to eat for twelve hours. She dug in the food locker and consumed the sweet ration bars she found. Sabre remained unconscious, his breathing gradually speeding up, and she decided that he needed the rest now that the crisis was over. The open door made her nervous, and after she had eaten she pulled it closed, leaving a narrow gap for ventilation, then settled down on the couch.

  Something jerked her from her uneasy doze, and she sat up. Sabre crouched beside the hatch, gazing out at the alien landscape.

  He looked at her and smiled. "We made it."

  She nodded. "Only just."

  "But we did." He held out his hand, and she took it, embraced him and kissed his cheek.

  "Do you know where we are?"

  He gazed at the alien landscape again. "No idea."

  "Why are we still moving?"

  "The pod's antigravity keeps us a metre above the ground, so the wind's blowing us along. I could set an anchor, but we might as well drift for now."

  "I like this little pod
. It saved us."

  "Well, that's good, because we're going to be living in it for a while. It's designed to serve as a shelter, and I've opened the vents and started the fans that blow air in. Unfortunately, it has no propulsion, it only had enough fuel for one landing, so we go with the wind, or I could push it."

  "How are you feeling?"

  He sighed. "Really weak. I used a lot of energy to survive the lack of oxygen."

  "What does the cyber's bio thing say?"

  "Fifty-four per cent."

  "You should eat. There's plenty of food."

  "That might have to last a while."

  "You need to get your strength back; you might need it to..." She bit her lip.

  He smiled. "It's okay. You're right; this could be a dangerous place."

  She fetched some ration bars from the food locker for him. "How will we find Tarl and Kernan?"

  "That's not going to be easy. The pods will drift downhill, so if they've landed in the same area we might meet up at the bottom of the nearest hollow."

  "How are we going to get off this world?"

  "That's the really tricky bit. I don't know. If the pod's beacon is on the wrong frequency, no one will find us." He glanced at the bracelet on his left wrist. "This is a sealed unit, impossible to fix."

  "So... we're stuck here?"

  "Could be, unless there's civilisation of some sort. Quite a number of uninhabited planets have mining or farming operations on them."

  "That would make them inhabited."

  "Technically yes, but no one lives on them permanently, just drilling crews that rotate periodically, or, in the case of farming operations, harvesters or slaughterers that visit once a year."

  Tassin gazed at the strange landscape. "How will we find them?"

  "Again, with difficulty. I'll try with the cyber. If they've got sophisticated enough equipment, they might pick it up, or I might be able to receive their communications when we're close enough. But we've got a whole planet to search. It could take a while."

  "Then I hope we find food here."

  Chapter Three

  Fairen looked up and pushed aside his half-finished plate of grilled steak, sautéed vegetables and gravy as his commander stopped in front of him and bowed. A servant came forward to take it, shooting Commander Shrain an accusing glance. The commander looked guilty, studying his shoes, and Fairen's brows drew together. He always found his crew's overzealous concern about his welfare, in particular his eating habits, irritating, and today he was more irritable than usual. He missed Sabre, and Pryan's endless questions had started to wear at his nerves, although the youth's company made a refreshing change from the dumb subservience of his crew.

  "What is it, Commander?"

  "You asked me to notify you if anything unusual happened concerning the link with the... ex-cyber, My Lord."

  "Yes, I did."

  "Well... the locator beacon has stopped."

  "When did this happen?"

  "A few hours ago." Shrain frowned at his shoes. "We waited to see if it was just a glitch, or interference from a comet, space storm or anything like that. It hasn't re-established the link."

  "What was the location of the last signal?"

  "The area where we left them."

  "Go back there."

  The commander bowed. "Yes, My Lord, at once." He typed on his com-link's keypad and read the words that scrolled across the tiny screen, then glanced up. "The ship is in translocation configuration. Translocation in fifteen seconds."

  "When I want a running commentary, I'll ask for one, Commander."

  "Yes, My Lord, sorry."

  A flash of weird purple light shone in through the screens, and a familiar tingling sensation prickled Fairen's flesh. Shrain keyed his com-link and read the screen.

  "No sign of the scavenger ship, My Lord. All that's here is... debris. A spreading field of it." He hesitated. "It looks like the ship blew up."

  Fairen stood up, his brows drawing together. "Any survivors? Any life pods?"

  "No, My Lord."

  "Who did it? Find out what ship attacked them. I want to know."

  "My Lord, the debris is travelling at two hundred times light speed, so they were underway when the ship blew up."

  Fairen glared at him. "So?"

  "It's possible that it was an accident, My Lord. That was an exceedingly old ship."

  "Find out, Commander. I want to know what happened, and whether any escape pods left the ship. Find the bodies."

  Shrain looked glum. "My Lord, an explosion like that would have vaporised any bodies. All we'll find is biological matter, but how many people died and who they were we'll never know. Even with DNA reconstruction -"

  "Would the explosion have vaporised a cyber unit, or the barrinium plating on his bones?"

  "No, My Lord."

  "That's all I'm concerned about."

  "But finding such small objects in a debris field this size, which is expanding at a rate of -"

  "I don't care!" Fairen glowered at the hapless man. "Do a DNA reconstruction. It should be pretty easy to find out if a cyber died in that explosion."

  "Yes, My Lord." The commander bowed and retreated.

  ****

  The pod drifted through a forest of strange, tiger-striped trees with large fleshy leaves and drooping, foul-smelling flowers, moving down a gentle slope. It would encounter a tree trunk and come to a standstill, then roll around it and continue on its way. Sabre walked outside, exploring the foliage and odd fruits, fungi and roots, looking for something edible.

  Tassin sat on the edge of the hatch, her feet dangling, watching him. The strange antigravity unit under the pod had fascinated her for a while, with its rotating silver ring that had no connection to the pod other than, Sabre assured her, an electromagnetic tether. The pod had deployed silver boards to catch sunlight, and would run forever, or until something broke.

  Sabre yanked out a scrubby bush and scanned the bulbous roots, broke off a piece and tasted it. He spat it out with a grimace and glanced at her.

  "Edible, but nasty tasting."

  "Why haven't we seen any animals?"

  "Could be there are none, or very few. This isn't a rich ecosystem. It's actually very poor."

  "Not even insects?"

  "Possibly."

  "So what pollinates the flowers?"

  Sabre glanced at a drooping bloom and shrugged. "Wind, maybe."

  "Something makes a hooting noise."

  "Yeah."

  "Nothing on the scanners?"

  He looked vague for a moment, then shook his head. "Nope."

  "This place is too quiet."

  "Can't say I like it much either."

  "And two suns. Weird."

  "A binary system. Quite rare that it has an inhabitable planet."

  Tassin swung her legs. "Can't the cyber tell us where we are based on that? A binary system close to Toron?"

  "There isn't one."

  "That's odd, isn't it?"

  "Very." He plucked an orange fruit, scanned and tasted it, then smiled and brought it over to her. "Try this. It's not bad."

  She took a little bite and pulled a face, spitting it out. "Yuck. Tastes like shit."

  "It's better than the other stuff I've been tasting, and how do you know what shit tastes like, anyway?"

  "I'm pretty sure that's what it tastes like. You eat it, if you like it so much."

  Sabre took the fruit and tossed it away. "There may come a time when you'll be happy to eat it."

  "I'll wait until then."

  "Fine." Sabre pulled a piece off one of the drooping flowers and tasted it, his brows rising. "This doesn't taste like shit."

  Tassin tried it, discovering that it had quite a pleasant, if tart, taste. "This isn't bad."

  "It's not much good nutritionally, though."

  "Maybe you need to try the less obvious things, like leaves and bark."

  "Why don't you try them?" he asked.

  "I don't have scanner
s."

  "There's nothing toxic in these trees."

  Tassin slipped off the hatch and walked over to a tree, digging at the bark. "It's too tough."

  Sabre came over and ripped off a chunk, handing it to her. She sniffed it, wrinkling her nose at its strange scent, and then nibbled it. "Hey, this is nice."

  Sabre tried it, nodding. "Yeah, very nice, but again, not good enough nutritionally."

  "It's better than nothing."

  "Actually, it's not. It's mostly cellulose, so you'll use more energy digesting it than you'll get out of it, therefore it will be bad for you."

  "Let's try a leaf then." She glanced up at the fleshy leaves out of her reach.

  Sabre studied them, the brow band flashing, and shook his head. "Even if they taste like chocolate, they're also useless."

  "Then why did you let me taste the bark if you knew it was no good?"

  He shrugged. "It's time you did some tasting, and I thought it would be really foul."

  "Oh, so you thought you'd let me try it?"

  "Yeah." He chuckled.

  Tassin picked up a rotten fruit and hurled it at him, but Sabre dodged behind a tree, laughing. She picked up another one and pursued him, and he dodged again, scooping up a missile. Tassin shrieked as it hit her on the bottom when she tried to dodge, yelling in dismay and chagrin.

  "No! Enough! Stop, you'll hurt my ribs."

  Sabre dropped a squishy fruit and came over to her, grinning. "Any excuse. You're just chicken."

  "No, I'm just too clever to play this kind of game with a bloody cyber."

  "I would have let you hit me."

  "That's not as satisfying as this." She lifted the hand she had hidden behind her back and squashed a rotten fruit on his chest.

  Sabre laughed and made a grab for her, and she dodged behind the tree, giggling. Gripping the trunk, he gave it a shake. Rotten fruit rained down, one landing on her shoulder with a squelch.

  "Oh you rotter!" she yelled.

  Tassin picked up another fruit and jumped out from behind the tree, then almost fell over laughing. One of the rotten fruits had landed on Sabre's head, and sticky juice ran down his neck. He picked it out of his hair, grinning as she clutched her ribs and doubled over in convulsions of mirth.