Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) (20 page)

“Agreed.” Fitz picked
up the scissors and a pair of needle nose pliers, and lifted up the corner of
the tape, preparing to cut when her comm sputtered to life. Startled, she
twitched. The bomb slid across the table and skidded to a stop. Three sharp
intakes of breath filled the room.

“I’ve arrived, Colonel,”
Lizzy said. “Mamma Dragon and her six white chicks are boarding now. And the
cats.”

“Get them out of here.
Straight home. Lock her out of the controls so she can’t make any unscheduled
detours.”

“What about you,
Colonel?”

“I’ll find my own way
home. Go. And, Lizzy, don’t call me back until you’re down.” That should give
them enough time to deal with the device, but to be safe Fitz shut down her
comm and shuffled all unnecessary functions to standby, leaving only the
scrolling digits of her chrono up in her inhead display.

She rolled her neck and
bent over her patient, beginning the surgery of removing the tape like so much
dead skin. Lister lifted away each piece as it came free.

“Hazel, stop breathing
down my neck,” Fitz grumbled.

The XO shifted away.
“Sorry.”

Finally, with the tape
a pile of fragments, the canister was exposed, wedged between the timing
mechanism and the power cell. Afraid to touch even the case, Fitz lifted it
away with the pliers and eased it into the now empty tool box, snapping down the
lid. With that out of the picture, all she had to face was an explosion, and
she might be able to survive that.

Lister delved through
the exposed device’s wires and components. “Just a power core from a sidearm,
and the timer looks to be from a personal appointment tablet. So simple, but
effective. I must have seen Wolf assemble hundreds of these things.”

Fitz looked up at the
woman sharply, but Lister seemed not to notice her scrutiny.

“From here on it’s a
piece of cake.” The engineer pointed out wires, in a precise pattern and order.

Fitz’s cutters hovered
over the fat red wire leading into the power cell. “Not this one?”

Lister shook her head.
“That’s a good way to get blown to smithereens. It’s a failsafe, to keep
someone else from defusing the bomb. You have to cut the others first.”

“Who were you worried
about, besides the bugs?”

“He did tell you that
some of the bugs weren’t as stupid as…, well, as bugs, didn’t he?”

Following the
directions, Fitz snipped each wire in turn, finally coming to the last one. The
one she would have cut immediately if Lister hadn’t been there. She placed the
now harmless pieces in the tool box.

Tension flowed out of
the room with a collective sigh.

“Hazel, you can go tell
your captain that he can take his ship into dock now,” Fitz said.

“Gladly.” Mandisa
rushed out the door.

“Very good, Colonel.”
Lister rounded the table. “Back at the Atrium, I wasn’t sure about you. I had
you pegged for some sleazy SpecOps bimbo trying to manipulate Wolf. Not that
he’d ever let you get away with that. But I was wrong. You’re just the kind of
badass he needs to keep him in line. And I suspect he knows that.” She patted
Fitz on the back as she left. “I’ll bet the two of you will have an interesting
future together.”

Alone, Fitz stared at
her shaking hands. She hoped with every centimeter of her being that Lister was
correct.

__________

Cypher walked, peeling
off pieces of the vac suit and dropping them in his wake. Awareness returned,
and he stopped, seeing his surroundings for the first time. Only a few seconds
ago there had been nothing, only blackness. He remembered blasting out of the
shuttle bay, but nothing more.

“You okay, Bud?” a
voice said.

Cypher looked around.
He seemed to be in a maintenance area. Behind him, a trail of castoff pieces of
vac suit led back to a landing bay. The inner airlock stood open, revealing the
construction pod lying in a welter of broken parts and bent antennas, its side
smashed in and manipulator arms twisted at useless angles.

“Hell of a job flying
that thing in here. You sure you don’t want me to call a medic? Looks like you
hit your head; there’s blood on it.” The anonymous voice continued to prattle
at him.

Cypher rubbed his hand
across his bristly head, fingers coming away sticky with blood. He looked down
at the bottom of the suit, still encasing his legs, then scraped it down his
hips and kicked it away. Ignoring the startled yells, he walked toward an exit,
moving faster with each step, until by the time he reached the station
concourse beyond, he was in a flat-out run.

The Other had brought
them in on the commercial side, bypassing the problems of getting back out
through military security. He had no memory of their flight; his mind partner
had been in charge the entire time, saving them both. Why hadn’t he just pulled
his spike, flushed Cypher away with a tap on his mental delete button?

He couldn’t stay here.
They were probably already searching for him. The cubical he’d rented earlier
would offer a hiding place until he figured out what to do. Head down, he set
off across the crowded concourse, ignoring the wary looks his appearance drew
from passersby.

Cypher wanted out, away
from these games of death and power between the Smiling Man, Ransahov, and Gray
Eyes. Games where his body was the battlefield and he a weapon. He planned to
run as far and as fast as this body would take him, now, while The Other had
relinquished control to him.

This failure had cost
him a lot of money, but he still had the retainer, safely squirreled away in
banks all over the Alliance. It wouldn’t set him up as comfortably as he’d
hoped, but he could make more. This body’s augmentations could earn him a nice
living out in the Back of Beyond, where people didn’t ask question, only wanted
results.

Maybe he could track
down a renegade med-tech who could cut The Other out of his mind. Was that even
possible? He was the owner, the organic entity who had given rise to the
thoughts, knowledge, and skills Cypher sometimes found so useful, but could he
continue to control The Other? He seemed to be getting stronger, breaking
through more easily.

Cypher was the invader,
the trespasser, only a program running on a computer buried deep inside this
body’s chest. Maybe he could escape, flee to another body? Computer programs
with real human emotions and memories controlled ships, didn’t they? And
androids? Could a new body be built for him?

Despite all the
augmentations he carried, he didn’t want to be a machine and never feel
emotions again. Or the touch of a woman, like Gray Eyes. He remembered the way
she’d looked at him, love turning her eyes silver. No. Not him. She saw The
Other.

The enticing aroma of
neubeast steak stopped him outside an eatery. His inhead display flashed an
alarm from the medical monitoring system, warning of extreme low blood sugar
and urging him to eat immediately. He eyed the glass-fronted restaurant, its
well-dressed patrons and human waiters. Not here. He stumbled farther along
until he found a quiet self-serve processor court.

He ordered two
sandwiches, coffee and a dessert, blinking in confusion at the amount due
displayed on the screen until he remembered his credit chip was still in the
pocket of the uniform pants he wore under his coveralls. A small table in the
corner offered him the privacy to gobble his food like a starving animal, and
then he was back out on the concourse, hurrying for the safety of his cubical.

A gift store caught his
eye, bottles of liquor lining the window’s shelves. He turned in and bought the
cheapest bottle of vilaprim they had, alarmed at the bite out of his finances
even this rotgut took. He’d have to reload the chip at a bank kiosk soon. The
human attendant at the counter placed the bottle in a sack, but refused to look
at him.

He reached the fragile
protection of his cubical, shut the door, and leaned against it. The tiny room
couldn’t offer much shelter; just enough to clean up, change clothes, and get
blind staggering drunk. He popped the cap on the liqueur and drained half the
bottle. The green vileness burned down his throat and pooled in his stomach
like a chunk of burning ice.

One look in the mirror
over the miniscule washbasin told him why the clerk had turned away. Blood
matted his hair, crusted his upper lip, and tracked down his chin. The front of
his coveralls were dark with dried blood. He scrubbed his face, water running
off it and down the drain in swirls of pink. At least there weren’t any open
wounds.

Cypher sat on the bed,
flopped back, and closed his eyes, just for a few minutes. He lay there,
smelling only the chemical solvent from the toilet and the stench of his own
body. Within seconds he was back on his feet, pacing. He was so tired, tired of
running, of being afraid, but he couldn’t rest now. When he was on board a
liner headed out of the system, then he’d sleep, only then. Now he needed to
change. He disposed of the bloody clothes and changed into another disguise,
the dark robes of a Vedian scholar.

He drained the bottle
of vilaprim, disposed of it, and waited for the pleasant glow to envelope him. But
it never came; only the ragged pain in his stomach that warned he was hungry
again. Despite this vile junk’s reputation for potency, the cheap stuff did
nothing to numb his churning thoughts. He snatched up his case and pushed his
way out of the cubicle.

The next flight leaving
Coronia was an old junker bound for the Tartaglia system, a hellhole of
asteroid mining and frozen methane moons. And, being located on the far side of
the Alliance, it was the most expensive ticket on the board. He hoped he could
link to a bank on the ship, but doubted it. At least he’d be able to buy a
ticket out of there later, but for now all he wanted was away.

“You’d best hurry, sir.
The ship is currently boarding at Gate 83, level A,” the ticketing computer
warned him as it dispensed his boarding pass.

He dashed to his gate,
dark robes flapping behind him, and tucked into the end of a line of rough-looking
miners. If anyone wondered why a scholar was headed for a frontier mining
system, they chose not to comment. The computer scanned his pass and he hurried
down the ramp.

He stumbled and caught
himself with a hand against the wall, angry at his clumsiness. When he started
after the knot of passengers disappearing down the ramp, his legs refused to
move. He focused all his will on making one foot slide in front of the other,
the resistance making sweat bead on his face.

Not now. Not again.
Leave me alone.

He screamed at The
Other in the silence of his mind, then drew a deep shaking breath and began
moving again. Now it was easy.

He realized that he’d
turned around and was headed back into the station. Cursing, he reversed
direction, retreating toward the ship, but the resistance returned. As he drove
himself against it, pain lanced into the back of his skull, just above his
spike. With each step nearer the liner’s open door, the agony increased, fire
skittering across the surface of his brain like burning insects.

No, No, No.
He knew this. The compulsion that rode inside the computer housing his
consciousness. Not The Other, but the tool the Smiling Man used to control him.
He looked toward the open hatch. If he could get aboard; they’d seal the lock
and he couldn’t be pulled back, not unless the madness was so great it drove
him out the airlock in his need to return to his tormentor. He begged The Other
for help, but for once the voice was silent.

He sobbed and turned
away, letting the compulsion carry him away from any hope of freedom. Barely
enough credit remained on his chip to buy a shuttle ticket back down to
Striefbourne City, and to his own personal hell.

Another winter front
flowed across the Warren. Shivering, Cypher stood in the cold rain on the walk
in front of Tritico’s warehouse. Ever since he had saved them both on the ship,
The Other had been silent, pushed to the darkness at the back of his mind.
Cypher doubted he could survive another loss of control, but as long as he held
his emotions in check, the fear, the anger, he could keep Youngblood at bay. He
didn’t understand why The Other hadn’t ended it yesterday. He’d taken back his
body. All he had to do was pull his spike. He would have been free to flush
Cypher’s existence from his mind and go back to his comfortable life. And his
woman.

Youngblood must be
using him as some kind of Trojan horse to get to Tritico. One more person who
saw him as nothing more than a tool, a means to their ends.

He wouldn’t be a pawn
any longer. Cypher hunched his shoulders, put his hands in his pockets and
walked away, but with each step the squirming inside his skull intensified. He
wavered to a stop, breathing labored and his mouth too dry to swallow. Only
retreating to climb the stairs and knock at the door relieved the burning itch
inside his mind.

Red opened the door,
seized him by the collar, and dragged him inside, then slammed him against the
wall, pinning him with an iron grip around the throat. Cypher tried to shove
the augie away, but froze as he felt the touch of cold steel against his face.

“Tried to run, didn’t
you, boy? I figured. Just like the small time thief and liar you used to be. I
told Tritico to let me handle this, but he’s got this hard on about forcing you
to do it. I can only hope, when this mess is over, that he lets me clean up
after you. I’m going to enjoy seeing you crawl.” Red punctuated his rant with a
fist to Cypher’s gut.

Too busy trying to
breathe, Cypher was only dimly aware of the augie dragging him into the
warehouse and tossing him down the stairs. He tumbled head over ass, struggled
to seize the railing to break his fall, but smashed his face on the treads and
ripped his nails against the metal. At the bottom the augie hauled him up and
propelled him toward the single source of light in the echoing darkness.
Shrouded forms littered the floor. Shelves, cages, and piles of metal tangled
in wire turned the space into a stygian labyrinth. Temperature and humidity
hovered at oppressive levels, forcing sweat to stream down his face and mingle
with the raindrops. He couldn’t identify the oily stench of the place, only
knew it presaged death and terror.

Three men clustered
around a desk, silhouetted in the single light. One figure, tall, slender, and
elegant, he identified as Tritico. The others had the watchful posture of
bodyguards.

Cypher picked his way
through the maze, passing a half-shrouded cage. His threat assessment computer
erupted in alarms and warnings as his ears identified a sound like chunks of
rusty iron grinding together. He threw himself to the right with all his
augmented strength and speed. Metal bars twanged as a heavy weight plowed into
them, and a blade scythed down centimeters from his face.

Red laughed, the sound
high-pitched and bordering on madness.

From his position flat
on the floor, Cypher looked up at two meters of horror, gibbering, whistling,
and squealing in a voice entirely too human. Only the barrier of the cage
separated them. The clawed hands strained against the bars, while the bladed
arms slashed the air and beat against the floor, trying to reach him. The
creature appeared vaguely humanoid, except for the double set of arms. The face
revolted him most, a mélange of reptile, insect, and human. Scales of black
chitin armored its cheeks, and the skin exposed between them bore a soft copper-colored
fuzz. A pair of emerald eyes watched him with hungry intelligence.

Red continued to
cackle.

“Ian.” Tritico’s voice
carried an edge that froze the augie’s laughter. “If you’d got him killed,
you’d have your chance to dance with our new friend.” He jerked his head toward
the imprisoned monster, then pulled Cypher to his feet and steered him toward
the light, wrapping an arm around his shoulder in an easy gesture that made
Cypher’s skin crawl.

“What happened up
there, on board that ship? What when wrong?”

“Either they knew I was
coming, or they guessed. Security upped their timetable. Took the ship out and
I was trapped. I escaped…”

“You mean you ran,”
said Red.

A glance from Tritico
forestalled any further remarks from the augie.

“She must have found
the bomb and defused it after I, ah…left.”

“What about Costos?”

“Who?” Cypher tried to
shift away from Tritico, but the grip on his shoulder was iron.

“The assassin I sent to
take care of Colonel FitzWarren while you did your job.”

Cypher looked down and
to the right. “She killed him.”

Tritico released him.
“You don’t lie any better than Wolf does. What really happened?”

“He attacked us, me. I
had to stab him.”

Red snorted. “And then
you should have pulled out the blade and stuck it in that pretty little black
jacket, but I suspect your problem is you’ve got something else you’d rather
stick into that augie bitch.”

Cypher snapped his head
around to snarl at the augie. “You shut up. There was no time.”

Tritico raised a
quelling hand. “Gentlemen, let’s not squabble like a pair of children, shall
we? This unexpected run of failures has forced me to make other arrangements
regarding Ransahov. I have another job for you.”

“No. I’m through. I
want out.”

Tritico’s smile
widened. “And how do you propose to do that?”

How indeed? With that
compulsion buried in his mind, how could he ever be free of this madness? He
drew in a steadying breath.

“The same pay you
promised me for doing the Emperor?”

“No. No more money. I’m
offering something far more important to you. Your freedom.” Tritico stroked
his fingertips along Cypher’s face. “I’ll have my techs remove your leash.
You’ll be free to leave, if that’s what you wish.”

Freedom. Of course he
wanted to run. As fast as he could. Cypher closed his eyes and nodded. “What do
you want me to do?”

Tritico opened the long
box on the desk, folding back the lid to display the weapon inside. “You often
said the Warfield Ninja was the finest sniper rifle ever produced, and this one
has been modified to fire the type of ammunition you’ll need.” He indicated the
box of black-tipped slugs.

If the Emperor wasn’t
his target, there could be only one other person Tritico wanted dead. Gray
Eyes.

“It seems that when I
did not succeed in killing Colonel FitzWarren on Baldark, I gave my old friend
the opportunity to forge her into a weapon every bit as formidable as himself.
All I’m asking of you is to remove that threat,” Tritico said. “Isn’t that
worth your freedom?”

Could he kill her? Grey
Eyes wasn’t his; never would be his. Her heart belonged to the man whose body
he wore, and she’d never stop trying to bring her lover back. She’d happily see
him dead, deleted, gone, to make that happen.

He nodded. “Let’s get
this over with.”

Tritico indicated two
of the augies. “I’m sure Red and his friend would be happy to assist you, just
in case you run into any problems.”

“No, I can do this.”

Red closed the rifle
case, picked it up, and rammed it against Cypher’s chest. “Then let’s go, boy,
and you’d better get it right this time.”

As he followed the two
augies through the warehouse, Tritico spoke, and Cypher turned back, thinking
the words were for him.

What he thought had
been a tangle of pipes in the twilight behind Tritico moved, unfolding into an
angular form, half insect, half reptile, but no less hideous than the creature
in the cage. It chittered, leaning its narrow face down so that its faceted
eyes were on a level with the man’s. Tritico smiled, his words so soft only
Cypher’s enhanced hearing picked them up.

“Tell your hive-mates
to be ready. We will begin shortly.”

__________

Fitz eavesdropped on
the argument between Ski and Logan Von Drager as the two walked toward where
she sat nursing a cup of coffee.

“I don’t know why you
did an autopsy,” he said. “We know what killed the man.”

“It’s official
procedure.”

“But why you? It was
too dangerous. That body was teeming with the Tzraka virus. You should have let
an assistant do it,” Von Drager said.

“I don’t have an
assistant who’s privy to information about the symbiont, so until I do, I’m the
only one who can do it. I used all the standard biohazard procedures.”

“You could have
accidently nicked yourself.”

Ski stopped and glared
at her companion. “I’m very careful. I am a real doctor.” The remark shut down
Von Drager’s argument.

“Logan, for a
Lazzinair, you’re awfully scared of death,” Ski said.

“I wasn’t worried about
me. Just you.”

Fitz put down her cup
and rose, interrupting them. “No unexpected findings, Doctor?”

Ski shook her head.
“The knife wound by itself would have been fatal for a Normal but, like Logan
said, there was never any doubt what killed him. I’ll have my written report to
your computer by end of day. Is that all you wanted, or are you finally going
to let me poke around in those mechanical innards of yours?”

“No, I came by to pick
up Jumper.”

“That’s right, he’s
having that comm unit implanted. You sure you want to do this? I know that
fuzzy little con artist. He’s going to be ragging on you all the time.”

“He already does.” Fitz
chuckled.

“He’ll be able to do it
from farther away now,” Ski said.

“I thought we’d go home
to Sea Spires; give him a chance to recuperate there.” Fitz said. “I think I
could use a little time alone. Some place with happy memories.”

“Good girl. Your
doctor’s prescription is to take a long walk on the beach, eat all the
chocolate cake you want, and go to bed early. And get some sleep. Tomorrow is
soon enough to worry about all this mess. Now, how’s the hand?”

Fitz flexed her
fingers. “It’s fine.”

Von Drager’s eyes
narrowed. “Was there something wrong with your hand?”

“I broke two fingers
yesterday in the fight.” Fitz pointedly didn’t say that Wolf had broken the
bones.

“The colonel has been a
little slower healing up than I’d like, and she’s too stubborn to let me check
her out properly.” Ski crossed her arms and scowled at Fitz.

“That shouldn’t be
happening.” Von Drager reached a hand toward her face, but halted. “May I touch
you?”

Fitz nodded. His
fingers were soft and cool against her temple. The chorus inside her head
intensified as it did every time she touched another Lazzinair.

“Do you hear that?” He
broke contract long enough to seize Ski’s hand and press it against Fitz’s head
beneath his own.

“What am I listening
for?” Ski asked.

“The symbiont.
Singing.”

“Singing?” Fitz said.
“Why is it singing?”

“Joy, remembrance,
welcome. I don’t know. It does that every time it touches a piece of itself.
It’s a single organism, and I think it feels pleasure when it’s back in contact
with other parts of itself.”

Fitz thought her face
must bear the same baffled expression Ski’s wore.

Von Drager hastened to
explain. “The symbiont that each of you carry is a fragment of the original
organism I received.” He tapped his chest. “Every time one of you was
implanted, be it directly or secondarily, it’s like I broke off a piece of this
and passed it on to you. It’s all part of the same whole.”

“What about Garion?”
Fitz asked. “He was conceived naturally. Would that make a difference?”

“I doubt it. He may
have received differing sets of genetic information from his parents, but what
passes for DNA in the symbiont would be virtually identical from both. It
shouldn’t make any difference.”

“But what has this got
to do with Fitz’s fingers not healing properly?” Ski asked.

“Listen.” He pulled
Ski’s hand away from Fitz’s temple and pressed it to her abdomen. “Hear that echo,
that second little voice, beneath hers. When we first touched, down in that
awful isolation cell, I thought I heard it, but the suppression field had my
mind so scrambled that I couldn’t be sure.” His head shifted back and forth
between the two women’s faces, as if frustrated they didn’t understand.

“She’s pregnant.”

Fitz jerked back, the
symbiont’s voice quieting with the break in contact. She stumbled as her entire
universe shifted beneath her feet.

“No, that’s impossible.
I was sterilized years ago.”

“And just like a cut or
a broken bone, the symbiont saw that as a problem it needed to correct,” Ski
said. “That’s why I implanted that IUD back on Baldark. No hormone-based birth
control can work for a Lazzinair because the symbiont will only readjust your
hormone levels. Only a physical barrier can block conception. When did you have
your last period?”