The Cyber Chronicles Book III - The Core (21 page)

"It's
evil."

She shivered
as the temperature dropped and a flurry of snow chilled her. "It
can't do much now."

"Maybe not."
He showed no inclination to take it from her, so she tossed it back
into the bottom of the cart. It whined, then fell silent. He gazed
at her. "I didn't expect to survive that battle."

"I know, but
I'm glad you did."

"I'm not. I
don't have much to look forward to." He glanced around as a burst
of orange light attracted his attention, a setting sun in some
unknown world. A wave of heat swept over them, leaving the air
pleasantly warm for a moment before it changed again.

"I won't let
Manutim take you back."

"You can't
stop him."

Tassin frowned
and jumped down to lead the donkeys forward. Sabre lay back and
closed his eyes. He ached with weariness and his limbs seemed to be
made of lead.

"Did you have
to be so cruel?"

He opened his
eyes to find Dena regarding him sadly. "She must learn to hate
me."

"Because this
magician will take you away."

"Yeah."

Dena cocked
her head, raising a hand to brush aside a tree branch that
materialised before her. It vanished before she touched it. "Surely
happiness, no matter how brief, would be better than this?"

"It would only
lead to more pain in the end." He closed his eyes.

Sabre could
sense Dena studying him, and wondered what she was thinking. The
chaos caused an odd flickering he found tiring on his eyes, and
closing them helped him to relax. He also had a splitting headache.
A wave of sea water broke over the cart, distracting him with its
chill slap, then it was gone. He realised that if he avoided
watching the chaos, living in it was a bit easier.

When Sabre
woke again, Tassin slept beside him and Dena led the donkeys.
Levering himself up, he gazed around at the swirling chaos, then
glanced inwards at the scanners and discovered that they were
working again. He studied the two life signs, one distant, the
other quite close to the right of the cart. It was pale green, and
small. Curious, he gazed in its direction, but the ever changing
scenery blocked his view. Idly he perused the cyber's information,
seeking a clue as to what the creature might be. The answer was
ambiguous; it was an unknown animal, but similar to a terrestrial
racoon.

"Dena, stop,"
he called.

The girl
obeyed, looking surprised. Tassin woke and protested when he
struggled out of the cart. His knees buckled, and he cursed,
climbing to his feet again. Tassin tried to help him, but he shook
her off and reeled in the direction of the life form.

"What is it,
Sabre?"

"I'm not sure.
I'm going to have a look."

Flux-reality
tugged at him. Trees and rocks came and went too fast to avoid, and
for an instant he shared space with them. A few metres from the
cart, he came to a Real-reality boulder, an island of constancy and
sanity amid the bedlam. The scanners indicated that the life form
was next to the rock, and he knelt to peer through the swirling
Flux-realities that hid it. Something furry lay there, revealed
briefly when the flux allowed. He touched grey fur, and his reality
warded off the flux long enough for him to make out a plump body
and black-banded tail.

"Purr!" Tassin
cried, falling to her knees beside him.

Mud and blood
streaked the mosscat's wet, matted fur, and gaping rents exposed
bleeding pink flesh. Sabre carried him back to the cart and placed
him on the hay, then rummaged in his pack for a needle and thread,
intending to sew the wounds up and hope for the best.

Tassin
exclaimed, "The sword!"

Sabre frowned
at her. "What about it?"

"It can heal
him, like it did you."

"It could kill
him too. Why should it help?" He flinched at a spray of hail,
glancing around. Tassin, more used to it than he, ignored the brief
pelting.

"The same
reason it helped me before. If it doesn't, we throw it away. It's
afraid of that. It will obey."

Sabre shook
his head. "I don't trust it."

"It healed
you. It can turn back time."

"It was trying
to kill me when it did that. What it did for you was a small
favour."

"But it needs
us now. We can force it to help us."

He gazed at
Purr, who stood little chance of survival without a miracle, and
nodded. "All right, bring it."

Tassin held it
out to him, but he shook his head. She hesitated, clearly puzzled
by his reaction, then laid it across the limp mosscat.

"Heal him like
you did Sabre," she ordered. "Don't mutate him."

The sword gave
a flat chime, and then its glow brightened, surrounding it with a
rainbow nimbus. With a flash of golden light, it turned to crystal,
and its power enveloped the mosscat. The hairs on Tassin's arms
stood up as the eerie power flowed around Purr, caressing his fur
with invisible fingers. The wounds closed as time flowed in reverse
within the sphere of power the sword created. Unseen claws undid
the damage they had inflicted, and within a few moments the
injuries vanished. As soon as it reverted to metal, she pushed the
sword aside, and it gave a sullen chime.

Tassin wrapped
Purr in a blanket and trickled water into his jaws. The mosscat
coughed, swallowed and opened yellow eyes. He studied them, then
spoke in his ventriloquist's voice.

"So, you
succeeded, I take it."

She smiled.
"Yes, Sabre did. The Core is gone, and the Death Zone will die
now."

Purr nodded,
his ears laid back. "Then why did you save me? My home's gone. I
have nowhere to live anymore."

"You'll have a
home with us."

"The people
outside will fear me. I'm from the Death Zone," he growled, his
little white fangs exposed in a slight snarl. Evidently Purr was
extremely upset.

"No one will
harm you, and there's no need for them to know where you come from.
We can tell them you're from the jungles on the other side of the
desert."

Purr shrugged,
raising a pudgy hand to wipe his whiskers. "Well, I suppose it's
done now."

"What happened
to you?" Sabre asked.

"What do you
think? When you destroyed the Core, everything went mad. The beasts
started killing each other, and fleeing the chaos, which killed
many too. I was attacked again and again. There was nowhere to
hide, no way to camouflage in this madness. Eventually I found the
rock, and I thought I would die there."

"I'm glad you
didn't." Tassin tried to stroke him, but Purr ducked away from her
hand. None of them had touched him before, and clearly he did not
like it. When she withdrew her hand, he relaxed and started combing
the tangles out of his belly fur.

Sabre
stretched out in the hay, and Dena led the donkeys forward once
more. Purr looked around and commented, "Presumably you wish to
leave the Flux Zone, in which case, you should turn to the right."
He went back to grooming his bedraggled fur.

Tassin studied
Sabre, who lounged in the hay, one leg hooked over the side of the
cart. He was pale and drawn, his eyes distant. Twice his gaze
brushed hers, but he ignored her scrutiny and concentrated on the
surroundings. It seemed he and Purr were unhappy about being saved.
Purr because his home was destroyed, and Sabre because he believed
the cyber would enslave him again. His pessimism annoyed her. She
was sure Manutim would call on her before he did anything else, and
she would persuade him to leave Sabre with her. Manutim had been
her friend for a long time. Sabre did not realise how much
influence she had with the mage.

Sabre remained
silent and withdrawn, eating his food with a resigned air when they
made camp. Now that he was awake, Tassin and Dena were able to get
some much needed sleep. Dena curled up under the cart and Tassin
stretched out in the hay.

A gentle
shaking woke her, and she opened her eyes.

Sabre stood
beside the cart. "Something's coming. Get up."

Brushing
tangled hair from her face, she sat up, wincing at her first sight
of the smearing worlds. Sabre checked her laser's charge.

"Only a half
charge left," he muttered. "My laser's gone, and the sonlar
too."

"What about
the big power packs?"

He shook his
head. "They won't fit the hand weapons. We're out of ammo." The
ground shivered, making him stagger. "Get the others onto the cart.
Let's try to move out of its way. Maybe it's just heading in this
direction."

Tassin bundled
Dena onto the cart with Sabre and Purr and tugged the reluctant
donkeys forward.

After half an
hour, Sabre said, "It's following us."

The familiar
sensation of cold dread coiled in Tassin's stomach, and she glanced
back. "What is it?"

"I don't know,
but it's big."

Purr sniffed
the air and growled, "Skifgar."

Sabre eyed
him. "What's that?"

"Big creature.
Very dangerous. One of the Core's worst creations, and one of its
favourites. We've moved away from the Core, more monsters live
here."

A few minutes
later, crashing came from the Flux-reality behind them, and the
donkeys broke into a trot, their ears laid back. Tassin ran next to
them, urging them on. The skifgar caught up at an alarming rate,
unimpeded, it seemed, by the chaos. The things that loomed out of
the bedlam buffeted Tassin, slowing her down. A thud from behind
was followed by an angry hiss as the beast ran into something
solid.

Sabre sat up
and took aim as a creature burst from the swirling Flux-reality.
Even though he had seen many of the Core's mutations, he was not
prepared for the apparition that blundered out of the bedlam. A
fierce head topped a sinuous neck bristling with short spines. Dull
grey hide covered the prominent bones of a knobbly, weirdly jointed
and proportioned torso. Luminous red eyes glared in a dished,
equine face with flared nostrils and long, translucent teeth that
dripped saliva. At the base of its neck, two thin arms ended in
clawed, skeletal hands with three fingers and two thumbs.

Below these, a
second set of arms, as sinuous as its neck, ended in scythe-like
horn blades. Beneath its chest, a pair of slender legs with
forward-bending knees had four-toed feet tipped with long claws.
The stout hind legs' powerful muscles supported long pasterns that
terminated in another pair of larger four-clawed feet. A long tail
lashed behind it, as bony as the neck, and tipped, like the second
set of arms, with a blade of bone or horn. Its skin looked thick
and tough. Bony ridges protected its eyes, and a curved plate of
bone – an overgrown sternum – shielded its heart and lungs.
According to the cyber's information, it was a trendil, found on a
harsh rim planet that had been colonised and abandoned many decades
ago after a prolonged and bloody war. Trendils appeared to be
designed with just one thing in mind, to be efficient killers.

Sabre aimed at
its head and fired, but the beast moved fast, its neck and head
weaving from side to side. Lowering his sights, he shot it in the
chest, wounded it slightly and made it hiss. He fired again, and
the monster stumbled, hissing again. Its eyes gleamed with
intelligence, but its maddened intellect seemed to know only a lust
to kill. When he fired again, the laser's beam died, and Sabre
tossed it aside. Pulling out his knife, he jumped down, stumbling
as his knees threatened to buckle. Purr leapt after him with a huge
sneeze, and Tassin dragged the donkeys to a halt, crying out in
dismay. Dena tried to tug one of the big laser cannons free, her
face twisted with effort and terror.

Tassin drew
her dagger and ran back. The trendil stopped, dark red blood oozing
from the laser wounds. Its head weaved from side to side, red eyes
gleaming. Purr, a bundle of spines, claws and fangs, sprang at it,
only to be caught by the second set of arms and flung aside with a
disdainful flick. The alien was intent on Sabre, awaiting his next
move. The cyber knew he was in no shape to fight such a dangerous
beast. Trendils were formidable creatures, and had ousted humans
from their planet through sheer dint of brawn and cunning
intelligence. He stepped sideways, and the monster turned to face
him, its blade arms making slow, anticipatory motions. The hand
arms remained tucked close to its neck, out of harm's way.

The beast's
head was far out of reach, making its armoured body his only
target. Sabre dropped into a forward roll, hoping to come up under
its chest. The creature stepped back too fast, however, and Sabre
lacked his usual speed and co-ordination. The monster's head swung
down, and its blade arms sliced towards him. Tassin shouted and ran
forward, hurling the dagger. It struck the creature on the snout,
and it reared back, blood oozing from a shallow wound. Its red eyes
assessed her potential as an opponent, and Sabre slipped out of
reach while it was distracted.

Tassin
retreated, to Sabre's relief. At least she seemed to have enough
sense to stay away, for a change. He circled the monster, keeping
its attention while avoiding the occasional swipes of its blade
arms. He did not have the strength to fight a trendil. His bio
status was a mere thirty-seven per cent, dangerously low, but there
was no other option. It hissed, and slurred words whispered in his
mind as the cyber tried to interpret its language. Tassin ran back
with the humming sword, and he shot her an incredulous glance.

He shouted,
"No! Tassin! Look out!"

One of the
trendil's blade arms lashed out, wrapped around her waist and
lifted her. Tassin screamed and threw the sword. Sabre advanced,
fear chilling his heart. The blade arm tightened, crushing her to
the skifgar's neck, the knobs digging into her. The sword fell in a
flashing arc, and Sabre leapt forward to catch it, then almost
dropped it. The Core thrummed with malevolence, and he longed to
cast it away. Its angry power sickened him, but he needed a
weapon.