The Cyber Chronicles IV - Cyborg

by T C Southwell

  “Entering corridor X436-32,” Striker murmured.

  There was nothing to indicate they had entered any sort of corridor, but Tassin waited to see what would happen next. A few minutes passed, then the ship said, “Deploying solar wings.”

  Tassin gasped as two brilliant, scintillating filigree webs sprang into being on either side of the ship, visible in the rearmost corners of the big window. They glowed faintly blue, and flashes of paler hues ran along them in regular wave patterns. They looked like nets made from spun diamond, she thought, and were by far the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

  Kole smiled. “Pretty, huh?”

  “They’re spectacular.”

  “Approaching light speed,” Striker said.

  A moment later, the window filled with blinding light, and then darkened, dulling the brilliance to a faint blue glow. She stared at it. “What causes that?”

  “We’ve just overtaken light. Now it’s all flying back past us, so it’s really really bright. The screens dull it, though, or it would blind us. Come, that’s all the excitement for now. I could use a drink.”

  In the lounge, she found Sabre seated on the sofa, sipping what looked like a thick nutrition drink. She sat beside him and accepted the glass of something pink and fizzy that Kole handed her. It tasted a bit like cherries.

  Chapter Four

  Tassin gazed around at the bio dome on the Drellin Moon, wondering how anyone in their right mind would want to live there. Then again, no one said this Trevare character was sane. Even Kole had his foibles. Striker stood behind them in the hangar section of the bio dome, fortunately small enough to fit in the gargantuan hangar. Disembarking had taken a few minutes, and Kole had explained that they had to wait for air to cycle in before he could open the ship’s outer door, then he had led the way outside. Sabre stood behind her as usual, staring into the distance. Beyond the semi-transparent dome, a harsh, cratered grey lunar surface stretched away to the horizon. The faint haze of a slight atmosphere coloured the sky a dull grey, but she doubted it was breathable, hence the bio dome. A few plants grew in pots beyond the translucent wall ahead of them, where corridors stretched away. The shadowy forms of several people approached the wall, and the door in it opened.

  A tall, thin man with a bland face and a shock of red hair, who looked about Kole’s age, led in a trio that comprised two women and a short, stocky man. They all wore dark blue one-piece suits with red emblems on the chests, and the tall man approached, grinning at Kole.

  “Kole! You old bugger! It’s good to see you!”

  The hacker stuck out his hand. “Trevare old pal, glad you could accommodate me.”

  “What are buds for, hey?” Trevare wrung Kole’s hand and slapped him on the back, then glanced at Tassin, his brown eyes twinkling. “And you brought company!”

  “Yeah, this is Tassin.” Kole said. “She’s in a bit of a bind, too.”

  “Same bind as you, huh?” Trevare shook her hand, his grip firm. He gestured to the trio behind him. “These are Ellis, Mag and Botham.”

  The two pretty young women had brown hair, green eyes and sharp features, and might have been sisters. The young man was rather rotund, with dark hair and blue eyes in a refined face that would have been handsome if not for the excess weight. Everyone shook hands with everyone else, and then Trevare led the way into the corridor beyond the hangar, which took them into a sizeable atrium filled with plants, birds and insects, where a curvy wrought iron table and six chairs stood. The girls went off to fetch refreshments, and the rest of the little party settled on the chairs. Trevare eyed Sabre, who took up a guard stance behind Tassin.

  “So, you have a cyber. For protection?” he asked Tassin.

  “No. I’m going to free him.”

  Trevare snorted. “Wow. That’s quite an ambition.”

  She glanced up at the cyber. “Sabre, sit down.”

  He settled in the chair beside hers, his back ramrod straight.

  Trevare turned to Kole. “So, who have you pissed off this time?”

  “Cybercorp.”

  “No way!” Trevare laughed. “How the hell did you do that? You didn’t hack them, did you?”

  “Nah, I’m not an idiot. Tassin’s in trouble with them, and she was staying at my apartment. Now I’m in the poo too.”

  “So for once you didn’t cause the shit. Can’t say I blame you, though.” He chuckled and looked at Tassin. “How did you manage to piss off Myon Two?”

  Tassin explained her suspicions about Manutim, and Sabre’s past.

  Trevare leant forward, clearly intrigued. “So he was free before?”

  “Yes. But now he’s been back to Myon Two for repairs and he doesn’t seem to be able to free himself anymore.”

  Trevare looked disappointed, and sat back as the girls returned with two trays, one laden with bright drinks, the other covered with plates of finger food. They handed out the drinks, offered everyone the finger food and sat down. One had to go and fetch another chair. After checking that it was non-alcoholic, Tassin gave Sabre a glass of the juice and a plate of sandwiches.

  Trevare turned to Kole. “So what do you need?”

  “Just access to the Net so I can set up a new alias and transfer my funds.”

  “No problem! Wait till you see my setup, you’ll be green with envy.”

  Kole smiled. “You’ve never seen mine.”

  Tassin sipped her fruity drink and listened to the two hackers chat, not understanding most of talk about computers and systems, data storage and other strange stuff. The girls soon grew bored and wandered off, and the plump young man listened to Kole and Trevare raptly. Evidently he was an apprentice or something, learning from a master, hence his subservient attitude and close attention to his mentor’s words. Tassin yawned and glanced around, her eyes drooping after the excitement of the chase on Ferrinon Four and the seven-hour trip.

  “Tassin!” Trevare said, making her jump. “Sorry, you must be bored stiff listening to us ramble on about technical shit. Botham, show her to a guest room. We dine at eight. Botham will show you the dining room. We’re very informal around here.”

  Tassin smiled and thanked him, following Botham to a comfortable room furnished with a largish bed, two plain brown chairs and a bedside table with a lamp on it. A bathroom led off it, and she showered, wishing she had clean clothes. When she emerged, wrapped in a towel, Sabre stood in a guard stance beside the bathroom door, his eyes closed. He opened them when she passed him, but he probably needed to sleep, she guessed, only the cyber would not let him. She cursed her thoughtlessness in forgetting that the cyber would force him to stand guard unless she ordered him to relax. The sword lay on the bed, and she pushed it under it, out of sight.

  “Sabre, you are off duty. Go and shower.”

  The cyber vanished into the bathroom, and soon the hiss of running water came from it. Tassin sat on the bed and brushed her hair, drying it. Ten minutes later, he emerged clad only in his shorts, his clothes draped over his arm, and proceeded to hang them up on the chair backs. They appeared to be clean and damp, and she asked him how he had washed them.

  “There is an auto washer in the bathroom.”

  “Show me.” She picked up her clothes and went into the bathroom. Sabre followed and indicated a white, metre-square device on the wall that she had assumed was a water heater. He opened the door and took her clothes from her, hanging them up inside, then turned a dial and pushed a button. The auto washer hummed, and she turned to find herself nose to chin with him. He stared over her head, and she gripped the brow band and pulled his head down.

  “Look at me,” she said. “I know you can hear me.”

  Sabre closed his eyes in a slow blink, and when he opened them again, they were focussed on her face. She gasped, and her heart pounded. Several of the brow band’s lights flickered red, then turned green again, and his eyes glazed. Only some of her joy ebbed away, however. It proved he could hear her and was able to respond, even if only fo
r a split second. She took his hand and led him back into the bedroom. Sitting on the bed, she patted the covers beside her, and he sat down. Tassin leant closer, trying to gaze into his eyes, but they stared through her.

  “Sabre. I want you to try to get free. You hear me? You can get free. You did it before and you can do it again. I crossed the void to find you, just as I promised, and now you need to free yourself. I never gave up, and you must not, either. Free yourself! I know you can do it. Try!”

  As she spoke, it seemed to her that the awareness in his eyes increased, as if he could hear her calling from far away and sought to swim up from the bottom of a dark pool. She stroked his cheek, hoping her touch would help to stimulate his imprisoned psyche.

  “Come on, Sabre, please try,” she said.

  “Order not understood.”

  Tassin’s breath caught as several of the brow band’s lights turned red, including the seventh control light, which flashed. A few seconds later, the sixth control light flashed, then turned red, and she chewed her lip. The fifth control light flashed red, then turned green again, and her heart sank. The control unit was fighting back. The fifth control light flashed and turned red. Sabre’s brows drew together and his hands snapped up to grip the brow band. She recoiled as his spine arched and he keeled over backwards. He slid to the floor, his lips drawn back in a grimace of pain and his eyes screwed shut. He hauled on the brow band, his fingers whitening under the strain. Muscles bulged on his chest and arms, and his breath came in harsh gasps. He rolled sideways as his back arched again, his face twisted.

  Tassin’s heart hammered with excitement and anguish. Sabre groaned, a sound of intense pain that made tears flood her eyes, and she stood up and stepped back as he writhed, his brows knotted and teeth gritted, muscles writhing in his jaw as he struggled against the micro-supercomputer in the brow band. The sixth control light, which his hands did not hide, turned red and flashed. Then Sabre convulsed once more as all seven control lights flashed three times in unison and turned green. He slumped, releasing the cyber band. The rest of the brow band had regained its normal configuration. His eyes opened, unfocussed, and he sat up.

  She shook her head in numb disbelief. “No… Sabre… God, what have they done to you? Damn them!”

  Tassin bowed her head, brushing away the tears that trickled down her face. Myon Two had done something that made it impossible for him to get free, just as he had said they would.

  ****

  Kole’s smile faded at her expression when she entered Trevare’s computer room the next morning, and he looked concerned.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Myon Two has done something to Sabre. He can no longer get free of the cyber.”

  His eyes flicked past her to the cyber who had followed her in. “He tried?”

  “Yes, last night, but that damned… thing stopped him. It shocked him into submission or something. He had a seizure.”

  Trevare swivelled his chair to face her. “If he could free himself before, and went back to Myon Two for repairs, you can be quite sure they fixed him so he can never get free again. A free cyber is, like, their biggest fear. In the early days, their detractors used to say it would happen one day. A cyber would get free and go on a killing spree. So if your guy could get free…”

  “He could, but now he can’t. I have to find a way to fix it.”

  “Have you tried asking him?”

  “He can’t tell me when he can’t get free.”

  Trevare nodded. “No, I don’t mean the host, I mean the control unit.”

  “I’m sure it will be classified, like every other aspect of cyber design.”

  “But it’s not part of cyber design, is it? It was a repair, and, as the new owner, surely you have a right to know the maintenance history of your unit?”

  Tassin glanced around at Sabre. “I don’t know.”

  “What harm can it do to try?”

  “None, I guess. What do I say?”

  “Just ask him. The AI is designed to be extremely user friendly.”

  “I bet it’s a software patch,” Kole murmured. “The brow band is a sealed unit. There’s no way they could have repaired the hardware.”

  Trevare smiled at him. “I agree.”

  “Sabre, come here,” she said.

  The cyber approached and stopped before her, assuming a guard stance. Trevare pushed a spare chair over to her, and she sank onto it, gazing up at Sabre.

  “Cyber, have you ever been repaired?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When? What was done?”

  The brow band flashed. “Three years ago, this unit experienced a malfunction in the host control interface.”

  “How was it repaired?”

  “A software patch was installed.”

  “Software patch!” Trevare and Kole said in unison, and Kole reached over to bang his fist against Trevare’s in some sort of congratulatory ritual, she assumed.

  “How does that help?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s more than we knew five minutes ago. Ask him if it can be uninstalled.”

  Tassin looked up at Sabre again. “Cyber, can the software patch be removed?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “A Myon Two control unit technician can uninstall it.”

  She frowned. “I order you to remove it.”

  “Unable to comply.”

  “Why not?”

  “Erasure of the software patch is forbidden. It requires high-level access codes.”

  She slumped, turning back to Trevare and Kole. “So what do I do now?”

  “The only people who have that kind of access are cyber techs,” Kole said.

  “Then I need to find a cyber tech and make him remove this software patch.”

  Kole shook his head. “Impossible. I think they swear an oath or something.”

  Trevare glanced at him. “He might if you held a laser to his head.”

  Tassin nodded. “The tech on Ferrinon did.”

  “He was just a low-level host repair tech. I don’t think a repair tech could fix a control unit problem,” Kole said.

  “Then we need to find a high-level control unit tech.”

  “Easier said than done; the security on Myon Two is airtight.”

  “But there’s a world they go to on holiday,” Trevare said. “It’s called Dojan Five, in the same solar system as Myon Two. There’s way less security there. If you grab a senior tech, he’ll be able to remove the patch, I reckon. Look, usually it’s impossible even for a tech to disable a cyber, because the control unit is hardwired into the host brain and it can’t be reprogrammed to release him. The core programming must be inaccessible, even with high-level codes, or someone would have done it by now. It might be possible for a control unit tech to modify it and maybe even erase parts of it, but not the actual interface, which gives the control unit domination over the host brain. People have tried to free cyber hosts before, and it’s never worked. But this guy’s hardware was damaged, right? That’s why the unit lost control of him. So if you remove the patch they uploaded to fix the problem, he should be free again.”

  Kole inclined his head, looking thoughtful. “It’s certainly a scenario that’s never happened before, because the control unit is impossible to break without killing the host – or at least, everyone thought it was impossible until now. This was one hell of a freak accident. Maybe his control unit was always flawed, and that’s why it broke.”

  “Maybe,” Trevare said. “It doesn’t matter, though; the point is, he can be freed, and, unless the tech you grab knows why the patch was installed, he’ll probably remove it to save his skin. He’ll think removing it would just make the cyber malfunction.”

  “Which could make him dangerous,” Kole pointed out.

  “True, but that’s what the override is for, although there’s never been a case where a cyber has become dangerous because of a malfunction – in fact, I’ve never heard of a cyber malfunc
tioning, come to think of it. The override is primarily used for transfers, to ensure the new owner can’t use the cyber to kill the guy he just bought him from, or, if they do the transfer the other way, to kill the guy who just bought him. Either way, whoever doesn’t own the cyber before the funds are transferred has the override.”

  “Yeah,” Kole nodded. “The only time I’ve heard of an override being used for anything else was when an owner flipped out and ordered his cyber to murder innocent civilians. Then enforcers were called in to arrest the guy and get his override, and they ended up killing him.”

  “Well he’s fair game if he uses a cyber to commit mass murder,” Trevare remarked.

  “Do enforcers have overrides that work on all cybers?” Tassin asked.

  “God, no! That would make owning a cyber pointless, wouldn’t it? There’s no such thing as a general override. They’re always keyed to a particular brow band, and they can’t be hacked, either.”

  “Hard coded,” Kole agreed.

  “So you can’t hack something that’s hard coded?” she enquired.

  “Well, you can,” Trevare said, leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head, “but what would be the point? No one knows what code overrides what cyber. So, let’s say you hack your own override – and only someone who owns a cyber has one – and you change the code. You don’t know whose cyber that code belongs to.”

  “What about if you found out the code of your enemy’s cyber and changed your override’s code to disable his cyber?”

  “How would you get his cyber’s code?”

  “From his override?”

  Trevare chuckled. “I suppose it’s possible, in theory, but anyone who doesn’t keep his override locked up in a super-secure place is an idiot. A lot of people give their override to the cyber it controls for safekeeping.”

  “But if he malfunctions…”

  “As I said, that’s never happened.”

  “I heard an override will self-destruct if you try to tamper with it,” Kole said.