Chapter Ten

 

Several hours later, a knock on the door made Tassin start, and Sabre, who was asleep on the bunk, opened his eyes. He sat up, grimacing, and Tassin handed him two more painkillers. When he had swallowed them, she opened the door. A scruffy crewman stood there, whose eyes darted around the room and came to rest on Sabre.

"Captain wants you to eat with him," he said.

"How kind of him." Tassin forced a smile. "We'll be ready in a little while."

"I'm to show you the way."

"Good, you can wait for us then."

Tassin closed the door, and Sabre sagged back with a groan.

Kole frowned at Tassin. "I don't think accepting his invitation was such a good idea."

"We have to eat. If you go out to fetch food, you might be taken hostage. This way we stay together."

"We could have gone to fetch food together."

"If you thought it was such a bad idea, why didn't you say something?"

He shrugged. "You were too quick."

"So I'll tell him we've changed our minds."

"No," Sabre said. "Ravel mustn't know we suspect him, or he'll act sooner."

"What if he drugs our food?"

"He won't. A cyber can detect drugs and poison."

"Oh, good." Tassin went over to the bunk and picked up one of the adhesive dressings Sabre had removed prior to his shower, pressing it over one of his wounds. When she had replaced all the dressings, he sat up so she could bandage his chest, then she helped him don the cast and sling.

The disgruntled crewman waited outside, looking sour, and frowned at Sabre before leading them down a dingy corridor with peeling grey paint and a worn brown plasfoam floor. Ravel's dining room turned out to be a sort of officers' club, and seven thuggish men awaited them, seated around a plastic table. The bare walls appeared to have had a more recent coat of shiny pale blue paint, and a couple of scruffy rugs adorned the scuffed floor. Two chairs stood empty, and Ravel indicated them with a wave of his hand, smiling.

"Welcome. I trust you've had a good rest."

"Your bunkroom stinks," Kole said. "You should have your men wash more often."

"That’s a luxury on a spaceship, Son."

"Oh, I don't know about that. A clean ship would boost your men's morale."

"There's nothing wrong with my men's morale, and besides, they're settlers. I don't command them."

Tassin eyed the two chairs. "We seem to be a chair short."

"We do?" Ravel's brows rose.

"Yes. My cyber will be joining us."

"We can provide him with a plate of cyber rations, but he can eat in the corner."

Tassin shook her head. "You'll provide him with a plate of real food, and he'll sit at the table."

"That's hardly appropriate."

She raised her chin. "I don't care. He eats with us, or we dine in our room."

"Very well." Ravel waved a hand, and a crewman brought another chair.

Tassin sat down and ordered Sabre to sit between her and Kole. Crewmen brought plates of steaming grey protein sticks and rehydrated vegetables and placed them before them, then poured glasses of cheap red wine for all of them. Ravel raised his glass.

"To a safe journey."

Tassin sipped her wine and started on the food, watching Ravel out of the corner of her eye. Ravel watched Sabre, his eyes glinting.

"I'm curious, Tassin. You don't look like a wealthy woman, yet you can afford a cyber."

"What does a wealthy woman look like?"

His eyes raked her. "Fine clothes, jewels perhaps."

"I have plenty of those where I come from."

"And where's that?"

"None of your business."

Ravel smiled. "Okay. Why are the enforcers after you?"

"Also none of your business."

"Actually, that is, since I granted you sanctuary and helped you to defeat them. Now I'm on their shit list too, and I'd like to know what for."

"I doubt they'll bother about you," Kole commented.

"I'd still like to know. I'm guessing it has something to do with your cyber."

Kole shook his head. "We're dissidents. We spoke out against the immoral treatment of cyber hosts. We even put up a Net site, and we're friends of Vershasen Korazon."

"That idiot?" Ravel snorted. "If you're anti Myon Two, why do you own a cyber?"

"Shasen wanted to examine one, so he could put the information up on a new site."

"But you kept him."

"In case you hadn't noticed, we're being hunted, and he's useful in that regard."

Ravel nodded. "A plausible story."

"You think I'm lying?"

"You could be."

Kole shrugged. "Believe what you want." Silence fell, broken only by the scrape of cutlery on plastic, then he added, "I want the dead cyber's armour and weapons."

Ravel shook his head. "The armour, okay, but no weapons are allowed out of the armoury."

"None of your men are armed?"

"No."

Kole turned to Sabre. "Cyber, how many of these men have concealed weapons?"

"Nine."

Kole raised his brows. "That's all of them, Ravel."

The captain scowled and shrugged. "Only my crew is allowed. No passengers."

"If you want my cyber to break up fights amongst your settlers, he'll need his weapons," Tassin pointed out.

"No he won't, since they don't have any."

"If your crew is armed, why do you need him to do it, anyway?"

Ravel's mouth thinned, and he frowned at his food. "My crew has duties to perform. They can't spend their time breaking up fights."

"You've managed until now."

"But now he's here, and, since I saved you all, it's the least you can do."

"We're paying for your help," she said.

"You didn't pay for the fight, and some men were injured. Two were killed."

"Settlers."

He shot her a glare. "Paying passengers."

Tassin met his gaze unflinching. "My cyber's injured."

"He won't have a problem. When you leave, you'll get your weapons back."

 

 

When they returned to their cabin after dinner, their crewman escort objected to Kole staying there, whereupon Tassin invited him to do something about it. He scowled at Sabre and left. The cyber sank down on the bunk with a grimace, holding his ribs, and Kole leant against the wall.

"He's going to try something soon, I just know it. He won't wait until Sabre's recovered even a little. We'll have to stick together like glue, and I have to go watch the engineers on Striker tomorrow."

"I'd much rather rest." Sabre sighed.

"When we get off this rust bucket, you can sleep for a week."

"What do you think he'll try?" Tassin asked.

"I don't know. There's not much you can get past a cyber, but I expect he'll think of something."

She turned to Sabre. "Why is it that you seem so much more formidable in this modern society, where they have such deadly weapons, than you were on Omega Five?"

He looked pensive. "According to the cyber's information, Omega Five is a post holocaust world, so I'm guessing it has regressed to a primitive society?"

"We don't have technology like this, no."

"It's primitive," Kole confirmed, earning himself a glare from Tassin.

"Cybers are designed to function best in a high technology environment. Powered weapons like lasers show up on the scanners, but primitive ones such as spears, swords or arrows aren't so easy to spot. Our barrinium body armour deflects and defuses laser bolts, which use heat to destroy internal organs. Barrinium is a superconductor; it disperses heat, or any kind of power that enters it, at a terrific rate. Large wounds inflicted by edged weapons, such as swords, are more dangerous because of the amount of bleeding they cause. If the enforcers had been better prepared for a cyber conflict, they would have armed theirs with bladed weapons."

"Which they probably will next time," Kole said.

Sabre nodded. "Maybe."

"And you can dodge laser bolts," Tassin added, recalling the amazing battle.

Sabre chuckled, winced and hugged his ribs. "No. That would imply that I'm faster than light, which I'm definitely not. I'm faster than the men aiming the lasers, that's all, although not as much against other cybers. My control unit provided me with tactical information, using my knowledge to select which were enemies and which were friendly. It then calculated and projected the firing trajectory of each man by estimating his most likely target. That allowed me to dodge most of them, but miscalculations happen. It's hard to explain, but what I saw in my mind during the battle looked like a web of intersecting lines, each one a potential danger to me, even if they weren't firing at me. The lines that converged on my position were red, since they were the most dangerous ones."

Kole shook his head. "Wow."

"That doesn't work so well with primitive weapons," Sabre went on. "Then the cyber can only show me the position of my enemies and estimate how they'll use their weapons."

"How many times can you be shot before it's fatal?"

"That depends on where I'm shot. If it's in the eye or ear, only once."

"In the body."

He looked thoughtful again. "In tests on Myon Two, a cyber survived twelve shots to the chest before succumbing, and it still took him seven hours to die. Those were fired in rapid succession, but if enough time is given between shots for the barrinium plating to disperse the heat, a cyber could survive many more."

"Bugger me," Kole muttered. "It only takes one direct hit to the body to kill a man."

Tassin frowned at him. "Are you implying that Sabre isn't a man?"

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"If Ravel wants to steal Striker and our money, why hasn't he tried to kill Sabre? He has enough men, and Sabre isn't armed."

Kole shrugged. "Perhaps because attacking even an unarmed cyber is a really shitty idea. Sabre would arm himself with one of their weapons in about two seconds flat and take out dozens of them before he went down."

Sabre's brows shot up. "Actually, once I had armed myself I would seek cover, not go down, as you so nicely put it."

"So you could beat all Ravel's men?" Tassin demanded incredulously.

"Given enough time and opportunity, it's quite likely."

"But you couldn't protect us at the same time."

"I could protect one of you. Two is a bit of a stretch, and cybers aren't designed for that."

"Who would you choose?"

"You."

Tassin smiled, and Kole snorted. "Of course he would choose you, Tassin." He turned to Sabre. "But if Ravel's men took you by surprise and all fired at once, what would happen?"

"It's impossible to surprise a cyber using powered weapons. Even if, by some quirk of fate, I didn't notice them reaching for their weapons, a laser must go hot before it can be fired, and the scanners would pick that up. It only takes a moment, but that's all I need."

"So they could surprise you with knives?"

"They'd have a better chance, but in order to use a knife they'd have to get close to me, and even then, my body armour will deflect blades. My eyes and ears are small targets, and they’d only have a split second in which to strike before I killed them. A group of men armed with bladed weapons could do some serious damage, and possibly kill me eventually, but that would take a while, and a lot of men would die in the process."

Tassin shivered, remembering Sabre’s battle with Torrian’s men, and again with the soldiers from Olgara. “I’ve seen that.”

Kole raised his brows at her. “When?”

“On Omega Five. Twice he was attacked by more than twenty soldiers with swords, and both times he killed them all, although he was injured.”

"Okay, good to know.” He turned to Sabre again. “Right now, Ravel is probably trying to figure out the best way to eliminate you, so it would help if we knew how to do that."

"A poisoned dart fired from a blow gun, but there are only three kinds of poison that will kill a cyber, and even those don’t work instantly, like they do on a normal man. It would still take me several hours to die, although I would without the antidote. Also, those three poisons are heavily restricted by Myon Two, so they’re very hard to get hold of, and very expensive. There are also a couple of sedatives and paralytic agents that work, especially the one Myon Two uses in caskets, to paralyse cyber hosts for cold sleep, but again, those are extremely hard to get hold of. Then there are a few poisons that will make me very sick for a while, although I will recover in a few hours."

"Okay, so we must get that armour for you," Kole said. "Although I doubt Ravel has a ready supply of blow guns or poisoned darts."

"What about poison gas?" Tassin asked, glancing around the little cabin.

Sabre shook his head. "The cyber would detect it, and I can hold my breath for more than twenty minutes, plenty of time to smash through a wall."

"But it would kill us, so he might try that, since once we were dead, a cyber would no longer fight him, right?"

"First of all, it wouldn’t kill you, because I’d have you out of this room in a matter of seconds. It might make you sick, that’s all. Also, a cyber will follow his last order until it's countermanded. Even if, for some unknown reason, I couldn’t rescue you, in a room this size, poison gas would take several seconds to kill you, enough time for you to order me to kill everyone on this ship. Ravel won't risk that."

Kole nodded. "I remember a case like that. The cyber was ordered to kill everyone, since the owner didn't know who had poisoned him. He started on the man's family and worked his way out into a city. By the time they tracked him down and stopped him with the owner's override, he had slaughtered a hundred and seventy-eight people. That case got Myon Two into a lot of hot water, but no one could think of a way to prevent it happening again."

"Surely there's always a risk of a madman buying a cyber and sending him to kill innocent people?" Tassin asked.

"Surprisingly, it's never happened."

"What I'd like to know," Sabre murmured, "is why we're staying in this cramped, stuffy cabin when Striker is ship clamped and accessible through the airlock."

Kole stared at him for several thunderstruck moments, then turned to Tassin. "He's right."

"So why didn't you say so before?"

"I didn't think of it." Kole shook his head. "It never crossed my mind. I'm an idiot."

Tassin sighed. "How long have you been wondering about it, Sabre?"

"Since Kole told us Striker was in ship clamp."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"I thought there must be a reason we couldn't live aboard, since no one else suggested it."

Tassin turned to Kole. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go."

"Hang on. There's still one thing to consider. Ravel's not going to want us aboard Striker. He'll try to stop us getting to her."

"If all our suppositions are correct, he's going to make his move soon anyway, so why not try it now? He's not expecting it. We might even make it aboard without him knowing about it. It's late; most of the crew will be asleep."

"There's always someone on watch, and cameras in every corridor," Sabre said.

Kole rubbed his brow and scowled at Tassin. "I've been wondering about something for a while myself. Why don't you just use that bloody sword of yours and spirit us all out of here?"

Tassin glanced at the shadows under the bunk, where she had concealed the weapon. "No. It's evil, and I don't trust it."

"It brought you to Ferrinon."

She shook her head. "You don't understand. I'll only use it as a last resort, when the consequences don't matter anymore. We might make it to the ship if there are only a few crewmen around."

"I hate to point out the obvious, but Striker's in ship clamp and the engines don't work. Even if we get on board, we can't go anywhere."

"Then why would Ravel try to stop us getting on board?"

"Because once I close the door, he'll have to burn his way in, and Striker is armed. With the recycling equipment, we could hold out in her for months, but he could still hand us over to the enforcers once we leave Rashid. He'd just lose out on a ship and the money."

Sabre sighed, staring at the ceiling. "For every move, there's a counter move."

"Basically we're in the shit no matter what we do."

"Then you'll just have to fix the engines yourself," Tassin said.

"Do I look like a damned engineer?"

"You must know something, otherwise why were you watching the engineers?"

“To make sure they didn't try to hack Striker."

Tassin turned to Sabre, who frowned and asked, "Do I look like a damned engineer too?"

"What should we do?"

He considered. "At the moment, our tactical position is weak, so we should strengthen it."

"So we should go to Striker."

"No, we do what Ravel is planning to do to us. Take him hostage and make him order his engineers to repair Striker."

Tassin looked dumbstruck. "That's brilliant, but what if he's not planning anything? We're only guessing that he is. He might be going to help us escape."

Kole threw up his hands. "Oh, great, now we're going around in circles, and we're back at square one."

"I'm just trying to be fair. You can't condemn a man for something he hasn't done yet, just because you suspect him of planning it."

"No, let's wait until he's done it, and we're floating around in space with the rest of the trash."

Sabre rolled onto his side, turning his back to them. "Could you two argue a bit more quietly? I'd like to get some sleep."

Tassin sank down on the floor and buried her face in her knees.

Kole squatted beside her. "Taking the captain hostage is the safest option, and you can apologise all you want if we're mistaken. No one will get hurt."

Tassin raised her head, looking glum, then nodded. "All right, let's do it."

Kole jumped up, and Sabre rolled onto his back, squinting at them. "Have we come to a decision?"

"Yeah, we're going after the captain."

"You want to kidnap him from his cabin?"

"It was your idea."

"Not kidnapping him from his cabin, that's full of pitfalls."

Tassin looked exasperated. "Such as?"

"Well, if he's really smart, he might be expecting us to try it, in which case we're walking into a trap."

"Surely your scanners will detect a trap?" Tassin asked.

"That depends on how cleverly it's set. He knows I've got scanners, and so he'll plan for that too."

"How?"

"Put a decoy in his bed; have his men standing by in their cabins."

Kole turned and banged his head on the wall.

Tassin sighed and rubbed her brow. "So what should we do?"

"Right now, we should get some sleep. Tomorrow we go to see him."

"That's fine for you, we're the ones who have to sleep on the floor," Kole grumbled.

"Take the bunk then, I'll -"

"No." Tassin scowled at Kole. "Sabre sleeps on the bed."

"Did I ask him to give it up?"

"You're the only one complaining around here..." Tassin trailed off, noticing Sabre turn his head towards the door, his expression distant. "What is it, Sabre?"

"It seems that we're about to find out how treacherous the captain is. He's just left his cabin and he's heading this way with five armed men."

"Your scanners can see his cabin?"

He nodded. "This ship's interior walls are all plasteel, but the metal hull doesn't stop the scanners either, only stone does."

"What should we do?"

Sabre sat up and swung his legs off the bed, grimacing. "Let's see what he wants."

Despite the warning, the thunderous knocking made Tassin jump, and she took a moment to calm herself before opening the door. Ravel stood there, scowling. His gaze impaled her, then flicked to Kole.

"You, back to the bunk room."

Tassin raised her chin. "I want him to stay here."

"I'll just bet you do, but it's against ship's rules."

"We'll pay extra."

"I'm not interested in your money, missy. Ship's rules apply to everyone. If I let him stay with you, all the couples will want to be together."

"Where's the harm in that?"

"It leads to more fighting. We don't have cabins for everyone, and if men and women sleep together in the bunk rooms, it's bedlam."

She shrugged. "So, we have a cabin. It's not the same."

"They won't see it that way, or they'll all want cabins, which we don't have. I did you a huge favour kicking out one of my crew, but this is as far as I go."

"We're only here for a few days. No one needs to know."

Ravel stepped closer and thrust out his chin. "This is a ship, missy, there are no secrets. It's like a damned gossip convention."

Tassin met his eyes and folded her arms. "Then we'll return to our ship, where your rules won't apply to us."

Ravel opened his mouth, then froze as her words sank in. Whatever he had been expecting her to say, that was clearly not it. He closed his mouth and shook his head. "No."

Tassin's eyes narrowed. "Why not? We won't be using your supplies, and we'll have comfortable quarters."

Ravel glanced at Sabre, who sat slumped on the bed, his eyes closed. Tassin could sense the cold calculations going on in his head. He smiled and stepped aside. "All right, you have a point."

Tassin nodded. "Good, I'll get my things."

As she turned away, Ravel grabbed her collar and yanked her towards him, snatching the laser from his thigh holster. He had barely drawn it when Sabre crossed the room in a bound. His fist hit Ravel's arm, knocking it upwards, and the laser bolt hit the ceiling with a flash of fire and a shower of sparks. The cast on Sabre's left arm split with a sharp crack as he grabbed the front of Ravel's jacket. Jerking the captain into the cabin, he twisted the weapon from his hand and pressed it to Ravel's brow, bearing him to the ground.

The crewmen reached for their lasers, but Sabre raised his head and said, "Drop the weapons or he dies."

"Do it!" Ravel rasped, his eyes bulging as Sabre knelt on his chest.

They obeyed, kicking the lasers away down the corridor. Tassin stared at the scene, a hand on her throat. Kole looked stunned. Tassin recovered first, and scowled at the prone captain.

"That was an incredibly stupid thing to do, Ravel. Did you really think you were faster than a cyber?"

"I thought his injuries would slow the bastard down."

"What were you planning? To take me hostage? Steal the ship and our money?"

He glowered at Sabre. "No."

"Tell the truth."

"What does it matter now?"

"It matters to me, because I suspected it, and I want to know if I was right. Clearly your intentions were not good," Tassin said.

"Go to hell."

"Sabre, hurt him."

"No!" Ravel's eyes widened as Sabre released his jacket and reached for his face. "I was going to kill you, then make Kole transfer the cyber to me."

"You were after my cyber?"

"Yes."

"What makes you think Kole has the codes, or that he would comply?"

Ravel coughed, his face reddening as Sabre's knee dug into his chest. "He must know where they are, or we'd have found them. He has command privilege, so he could do the transfer, and I figured he would once we had a gun to his head. The cyber wouldn’t have been able to protect you both at the same time."

"That's even worse than I thought. Here I was assuming you wanted the ship..." She glanced at Sabre. "That's why you let us aboard when Kole told you we had a cyber."

"Yeah."

"And I suppose you thought he'd be injured in the fight with the enforcers, so I would be unprotected."

"Yeah."

Kole scowled. "You bastard. You were going to kill Tassin for a stinking cyber?"

"I'd rather have taken her alive. I could have got a bundle for her from the slave merchants on Orrisa Three, but it didn't work because of the stinking cyber."

Tassin shot Kole a glare, then turned back to the captain. "Well, now that my stinking cyber has you at his mercy, you'll repair our ship and we'll all leave together. We'll release you on Rashid. If any of your men try anything, you'll die. Got it?"

Ravel nodded.

"Okay, Sabre, let him up, but keep him hostage."

Sabre got off Ravel's chest and gripped the front of his jacket, hauling him to his feet. The captain staggered, rubbing his chest, then gave orders at the men in the corridor, sending them to find the engineers. When they left, Ravel eyed Sabre, and Tassin was struck again by his unhealthy interest.

"If you wanted a cyber so badly, why didn't you just buy one?"

"Do I look like I have seven hundred thousand credits?"

"You offered to buy him."

Ravel shrugged. "I wasn't serious, but I've always wanted one."

"My heart bleeds for you." Tassin reached under the bed and drew out the sword, strapping it on, then brushed past Ravel and led the way down the corridor. Kole directed her through the warren of corridors to the airlock were Striker was docked, and he opened the door.

On the ship, Sabre pushed Ravel down on a sofa in the lounge and holstered his laser. Kole flopped into the command seat with a smile and greeted Striker, who replied in her usual calm, sultry manner.