Saving The Cyborg (Cyborg Redemption)

by A. M. Griffin

  The five seats in the pod were filled with civilians. His first duty was to protect the citizens of Kirs, even to the detriment of his own health and well-being.

  Taun stepped back abruptly, and the hatch slammed down in front of him, shuddering as it locked into place. The door had barely missed the tips of his military boots. The opposite door raised and in a flash the pod was jettison into space. From his view, Taun glimpsed the other escape pods already out there.

  A guard rushed past him. His eyes were wide, blood dripped from a gash on his forehead and a patch of his uniform was torn and hung off his shoulder. Taun peeked into the escape hatch next to him. Two seats left.

  He could save himself and the guard.

  The guard stumbled down the hallway, using the wall as a guide. Alarm bells blared and the red emergency lights flashed at a dizzying beat. The hall was almost clear of people as most of the escape pods in this section of the vessel had left.

  A cyborg, one Taun didn’t recognize, rushed behind the guard and slammed him against the wall. The guard’s loud squeal was heard over the alarm as his face met the metal of the wall.

  “You granho worm! You don’t get to escape. You stay here and die like you wanted us to!”

  Taun glanced longingly at the empty seats, but he knew what needed to be done. He pushed off the door frame and growled as he approached the fighting pair. He grabbed the back of the cyborg’s shirt, near the neck and yanked him off the guard.

  When the guard tried to take that opportunity to get in a punch, Taun stopped him with a hard glare then used his free hand to grab the guard’s arm.

  The cyborg glared at Taun with indignation. “What are you doing? You should be helping me make this worm pay for trying to kill us!”

  “This isn’t my fault!” the guard yelled. “I’m just following orders.”

  The cyborg reached around Taun to grab the guard. “You would kill an entire transport of people on orders alone?”

  The guard scrambled from his reach, using Taun as a shield. “I’m doing as told. Just as the Cyborg Military Elite did when you went to Bionus and killed the resisters there.”

  Not all cyborgs participated in the would-be genocide that Shui had ordered. Taun didn’t have a way to determine if this particular cyborg had been part of the resistance or not. In order to keep the operation as tight and secretive as possible, the cyborgs hadn’t known who, outside of their pod, was part of the resistance. Everything had been handled using codes and secured drop points.

  All color drained from the cyborg’s face and Taun had his answer about this one. The guard did as well. He sneered at the cyborg. “Not so high up there with morals yourself, heh?”

  Before he could overthink his decision and leave them both behind to blow up with the transport, Taun pushed them through the hatch. Without a backward glance, they scrambled into the last remaining seats and buckled in. Taun guessed their will to live was stronger than maintaining their hatred for each other.

  The escape pod’s sensors closed the door to begin launch sequence. Taun stepped back as the hatch closed. The opposite hatch opened, and the pod was thrust into space and safely away.

  With the roar of the alarms against his sensitive ears and the red blinking lights edging him on, Taun ran to each hatch and found each closed and empty. The precious time he had to escape had passed him by. At the end of the hallway, he confirmed what the pit in his stomach told him. He was doomed to die here. He turned and stared at the now empty hallway. His were options few.

  He could run to another hallway, to see if there were any other escape pods left but one glance out the port windows and he guessed his chances of finding one with an empty seat wasn’t likely. For a transport this size he’d guessed there was maybe twenty escape pods onboard. The escape pods were only meant for the service staff of the transport. Who cared if prisoners survived? Certainly not in this case as Shui had planned for all prisoners onboard to die anyway.

  “Taun?”

  Taun looked up, surprised to see the larger cyborg standing at the end of the hallway. “Raint? What are you still doing on board?”

  After they’d climbed through the ceiling and helped the civilians out, Raint had disappeared in the melee. Taun had assumed Raint had been on the first escape pod off the transport.

  Raint nodded toward the other cyborg that he half-carried, and half-dragged. The unknown cyborg had one arm thrown over Raint’s shoulder and neck. His head hung down and blood dripped from his face and the side of his body. “I had to go back and save him.”

  Taun didn’t know who the other cyborg was, but he was in bad shape. Taun performed a quick bio-scan on the unknown cyborg and cringed at the results. Multi-system failure.

  Taun shook his head, hating to break the news to Raint. “I’m sorry, but there’s no available pods down this hallway.”

  Raint indicated his head toward the direction he had been going before spotting Taun. “Follow me. I have a ship secured.”

  “Ship?!”

  Raint didn’t stay to elaborate. He took off down a corridor, dragging his friend and Taun followed. His heart slammed against his ribs as fear urged him on. No one knew when the bomb was set to detonate. The emergency communication hadn’t provided that information.

  They could have hours or mere seconds. There was no way of knowing. All the more reason to grab Raint’s friend’s other arm to help speed things along.

  Raint led them to a transport bay and true to his word, a small jumper was waiting, ramp down and with another angry cyborg hanging out the door with eyebrows pinched together and worrying her bottom lip.

  Relief washed over her brown face when she spotted them. “Move your asses!”

  They ran up the ramp, and as soon as they were in, a civilian closed the hatch.

  The female cyborg ran to the pilot’s chair. “Buckle up!” Her hands flew over the controls and the jumper lifted from the floor.

  Raint stuffed his friend in a seat as Taun strapped himself in. The jumper rocketed down the jet way. Raint finally made it to his seat and struggled against the momentum to secure his harness. With a rush of noise, the jumper exited the transporter. Then silence.

  Taun closed his eyes and laid his head back against the seat. They weren’t out of the woods yet. They still needed to get a safe distance away, otherwise they would be killed by the debris from the transport.

  The seconds ticked on, and he was aware of each one. A concussive blast rocked them moments later.

  “Hold on to something!” the female cyborg yelled.

  Taun gripped the harness that crisscrossed over his chest tighter. The jumper lurched to one side. Taun clenched his teeth together.

  “Here we go!”

  Was there…glee in her voice?

  She laughed maniacally as the jumper began to spin at a dizzying pace.

  Yes, there was no mistaking her glee now.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  Taun didn’t know what she was counting down to and was too afraid to ask. His answer came when there was a sudden weightlessness then just as abruptly, force slammed his head back into the seat. The sensation was jarring, but at least familiar. They had hyper-jumped.

  A victorious, “Fuck yeah!” came from Raint on Taun’s left.

  Taun opened his eyes.

  “We made it! I told you I’d get us out, Vril.” Raint declared to his obviously unconscious friend.

  Vril was now unconscious. He must have placed himself in recovery mode sometime after arriving on the jumper. Most cyborgs wouldn’t go into recovery mode surrounded by people they didn’t know. The process left them at their most vulnerable. Clearly, the other cyborg trusted Raint with his life. Maybe they were in the same pod grouping. It was the only way Taun would ever consider doing something like that.

  “We made it,” Taun muttered under his breath, slightly amazed. He’d been in the military for most of his life and had his fair share of harrowing experiences. He’d thought he would’ve
died many times and there’d been a few times when he would’ve welcomed it. This was the only time where he’d thought for sure, that this was the end. “Thanks for letting me tag along, old friend.”

  “We weren’t leaving any cyborg behind if we could help it, man. Not my style,” Raint stated.

  Taun finally looked around the cramped space. Besides the pilot, Raint and his friend, there were two civilians: a man and woman. The woman didn’t register as a threat. He easily dismissed her. The man however made alarm bells ring in his head.

  The man appeared stately in nature, regal even. He had his black hair cut short and styled perfectly even though they had been through the wringer. He had on tailored made clothes, not the kind that would’ve been replicated with the processor. This man was rich and powerful and looked the part.

  Taun knew this man.

  This man had stood next to Shui during the sham of a trial. He had also been next to Shui during the announcements when the order to invade Bionus came down. He wasn’t Shui’s right hand man, but he was part of Shui’s inner circle.

  “Prime Minister Ised?”

  Taun undid his harness and lunged over the seats in one fluid movement.

  Chapter Two

  “Release me!” Ised cried out as he frantically beat at Taun’s hand, which was currently wrapped around his neck.

  Taun ignored the command. He worked to unlatch Ised’s harness and gripped his neck tighter as memories of the atrocities Ised had committed bombarded his mind. “No. You’re with Shui. I don’t know why you were on that prison transport, but you can’t stay on this jumper.”

  “I’m not working with Shui! I’m not!” Ised fought against Taun. His weak punches and ineffective scratches didn’t register on Taun and didn’t initiate the internal damage report. Like a pesky insect, Taun easily pushed Ised’s hands out of the way.

  “Shui found out that I was a traitor, working from the inside, feeding information to the resisters!” Ised struggled to explain.

  The pilot gave them wary glances from her spot at the helm. “I believe him. He was on that prison transport like the rest of us.”

  That didn’t deter Taun. He squeezed Ised’s neck, thinking of how Shui had betrayed all of them with his actions. Ised’s eyes bulged in surprise and panic. Taun sneered, not caring that Ised’s coloring grew pale as his lungs depleted of air.

  “Who knows?” Taun said in response to the pilot’s claim. “Maybe Shui put him on the transport as a spy.”

  “To die?” Raint asked with a chuckle. At Taun’s hesitation, Raint added, “Look, I wanted to leave him too, but Zema forced me to allow him on.”

  Taun glanced at the pilot. “Why would you save him?”

  She lifted a muscular shoulder. “He was housed in the same cell with me and when the prison doors opened, he helped to get everyone he could out and onto the escape pods.”

  “He was the one who found the jumper,” Raint added.

  Some of the tension from Ised’s presence released. Taun rolled his shoulders back to ease his tight muscles. “I still don’t trust him.”

  Zema stood. She wore the same uniform as him, identifying her as Cyborg Military Elite. She was of average height for a female and pretty, but not beautiful. The short hairstyle with a section hanging longer in the front, which she tucked behind her ear now, flattered her features.

  There were a few hard lines on her face that came from strenuous muscle training program, along with the vivid red brand he could clearly see now with her dark hair moved out of the way.

  The crude CR mirrored the brand on his own face, given on Shui’s command, bringing Taun’s rage at the emperor back to the forefront of his mind. He eyed the Prime Minister again, reconsidering the idea of letting him live.

  “No one said anything about trusting him,” Zema said as if she’d read his thoughts. “Ancients, I don’t know if I trust any of you.”

  Taun couldn’t argue with Zema. While he knew Raint, it had been in passing. The others, besides Ised, he hadn’t seen a day in his life. Taun stood over the man who slumped into his seat, trying desperately to escape his hold. “Did anyone check him for communication devices?”

  The floor buckled, causing Taun to stumble and release his hold on Ised.

  The jumper careened hard to the right. Zema slammed into the side of her chair, Raint stretched an arm across the seat and palmed his friend’s chest to help hold him in place.

  Ised cried out in terror, but Taun ignored him and braced a hand on the wall to maintain his balance. Across from him, the civilian female who’d silently watched their fight screamed.

  Alarm bells blared overhead, and his stomach twisted. Not again.

  Escape! Escape! Escape! The command repeated in his mind.

  “What’s going on?” the civilian female yelled.

  Taun straightened as his personal damage report scrolled down his eye implant. The nanobots already coursing through his blood stream worked to repair the damage to his skin, muscles and bones.

  Zema scrambled to her seat and strapped herself in. Her hands flew over the controls. “We’ve been hit by debris.”

  “Systems?” Taun asked, not bothering to return to the seat he had vacated. Instead, he slid easily into the empty co-pilot’s chair beside Zema.

  The jumper was an outdated but widely used model and one he was familiar with. He had had the specs and flying manual downloaded to his mainframe years ago. While Zema didn’t need the extra hands, Taun wanted to make himself useful.

  “Small breech on the outer hull. We’ve got oxygen leakage.” Zema clenched her jaw, the tendons visible under her skin.

  Taun guessed as much by the sound of the loud roar coming from the back.

  Zema didn’t elaborate further. They needed to fix the issue if any of them were to survive. As advanced as their cybernetics were, even they couldn’t survive without oxygen.

  “I’ll look for a space suit,” Raint said, undoing his harness.

  The suit would allow Raint to leave the jumper and survive in open space. If the jumper didn’t stock one, Raint, like the other cyborgs, could survive in open space as long as the repairs were quick. But the suit was a small piece of the problem. The larger issue was if the jumper was stocked with the necessary equipment to complete said repairs.

  Jumpers weren’t meant for long-distance travel. Their names were very indicative of what they were for. To jump. That the prisoner transporter had one on board was a surprise. Jumpers weren’t meant for anything other than for getting to one point to the next, the quickest way possible. Because of that, there weren’t any comforts on board, or food replicators.

  Taun’s lips firmed. Fix the breech then find a suitable planet and regroup to find his pod mates.

  That was Taun’s only thought as Raint rattled through the small storage closet along the wall behind him.

  “Bad news. I found a suit that I could squeeze into, but this piece of junk doesn’t have the necessary tools needed for the fix.”

  Zema and Taun both turned at Raint’s announcement. Taun mentally cursed. It was as he guessed and feared. The civilians moaned, panic flashing over their faces though they held their silence.

  “I can’t believe there isn’t something we can find to use.” Zema lurched out of her seat and strode through the short corridor to where Raint hunched over a door, eyeing a back closet.

  “Be my guest.” With a sarcastic wave of his hand, Raint stepped out of the way.

  Zema grunted, dropped to a crouch and rummaged through the closet contents. Taun diverted his attention back to the task at hand. The jumper held steady on the course Zema had set but according to his scan, oxygen was now at eighty-six percent. They were losing breathable air quickly.

  “What if it can’t be fixed?” the female asked. Her gray eyes were large on a petite face. Her blonde hair had hints of gray in it and was wrapped in a bun at the base of her neck. She was of average size and older than Taun by at least twenty years. Age was w
eathered on her face and her skin wasn’t taunt anymore.

  “We’re not going to worry,” Ised calmly said. “What’s your name?”

  “Aesh,” she responded in a trembling voice.

  “Aesh, we’re in good hands.”

  Taun didn’t mind Aesh, a civilian, with them. What he didn’t like was the idea of one of Shui’s people sharing the same space with him. Taun hated Shui and everyone who followed him. He growled under his breath, wanting to wrap his hands around Ised’s neck again. Until he knew where the Prime Minister’s loyalties were, he refused to blindly trust him as Zema and Raint seemed inclined to do.

  Taun pushed thoughts of Ised to the side. There was no point in focusing on what he couldn’t change right now. Besides, once they arrived at a suitable planet, he wouldn’t have to worry about Ised or the reason why he was on the prison transport. His first order of business would be to find his pod mates, get back to Kirs and rescue his parents.

  Taun pulled up a map of habitable planets in the near vicinity where they could stop for repairs and supplies. The results flickered on the com screen and his heart dropped. They would need to make another jump just to get close enough to a planet that would meet their needs, even then, they would need a half-day’s travel to make it there. He viewed the jumper’s navigational systems again. Everything was going haywire.

  If they made it safely, it would be a miracle.

  Taun bit the inside of his cheek. Zema hadn’t known they would hit space debris and end up in this situation. She had done what any of them would’ve in a similar situation. Got them as far away as the jumper could carry them.

  “Oxygen level at seventy-two percent,” came the jumper’s system voice command.

  “What! What does that mean?” Aesh shouted, glancing around at all of them.

  Ised groaned and this time didn’t attempt to soothe her. Shock lent their faces a dazed appearance as they stared blankly around them.

  Zema blew out a hard breath, smacked her hand on the wall and stood. Her brown eyes reflected frustration as she met their gazes. “There’s nothing here. Why aren’t there any supplies onboard?”