The Abyss of Time

Chapter Thirty Nine

     Karalis watched the lander disappearing into the overhead cloud deck with a sense of frustration that was growing disturbingly familiar. Around him, the other cyborgs watched him warily. Their leader wasn't the type to take a defeat out on his underlings, but he'd rarely suffered so many defeats in quick succession. The cyborgs were entering new territory and they waited to see what their leader would do next.

     Karalis soon found new cause for optimism, though. He looked around at what remained of the Orchid crew's camp. There was a lot of stuff they could use. Four quads. Four mules piled high with equipment. The remains of the twelve war quads and the balloon used by the crew of the Covington, the lander the new arrivals had come in. Best of all, the Covington itself. All of it just lying around, waiting to be picked up.

     "Scavenge what you can," he told his followers. "Any material and equipment we can use. Take it back to the cave. The first thing we need to do is build a new body for Trombetta."

     "And then?" said Gomez, the most senior of the infantry cyborgs. "There aren't enough of us to get through the colony's defences and anyone who ventures outside will have a suicide chip. We've lost our chance to convert them."

     Karalis nodded. "Then we have no choice," he said. "We must resort to the Final Contingency."

     "Risky," Gomez ventured carefully. "Didn't work out too well for us the last time."

     "This time we will take additional precautions. There will be no rebellion. We may have to kill every human on the planet, but even if so we will be able to harvest eggs and sperm from the corpses. We can grow new humans in tanks. It may take twenty years but there will be new cyborgs. We will re-create our civilisation here, on this world. I promise you."

     The others nodded, and after a moment Gomez did as well. Then they wandered away to pick through the wreckage and equipment littering the desert.

☆☆☆

     The people shot by drone darts were beginning to wake up. Miller knelt on the bare steel deck beside Zanele, holding her hand, as her eyes fluttered open and focused on him. "Sam..."

     "Take it easy," said Miler, squeezing her hand. "It's all right. We're all okay. The whole family's okay."

     "What happened?"

     "The cyborgs found us, but a lander from the colony came and saved us." He looked away, suddenly ashamed and guilt ridden. "They lost a lot of people saving us. A lot of people."

     "Where are we?" Zanele looked around at the passenger deck. It was bare and empty. All the fixtures and fittings removed to leave bare walls and empty doorways. All the surviving members of the Orchid crew were lying on the bare deck without even a blanket under them to soften the hard floor.

     "On our way to the colony. We're safe, Zan. We're safe and we're on our way to our new home."

     Zanele sat up and looked around the room, counting faces. She relaxed in relief when she saw Jack and Lucy, Tensy, Maddie and Philip, but the frown returned as she failed to find some of the others. "Where're Bradley and Spencer? And I can't see two of the guards. Dave and Lucas."

     Miller squeezed his eyes closed as a new wave of guilt swept over him. "We lost them," he said. "They didn't make it."

     Zanele's eyes widened with horror. "The cyborgs got them?"

     "They're dead," Miller replied. "They began converting them but we stopped it before they could finish. The damage had been done, though."

     Zanale stared at him, but then seemed to dismiss the information as if it was too horrific to accept. Instead she got to her knees and crawled over to where Jack was kneeling beside Tensy as his wife struggled back to consciousness. Lucy was sitting beside them, looking relieved. Jack and Tensy then went to look at their children, who were still soundly asleep. Their smaller bodies has received the same dosage of tranquiliser as the adults, which meant they would take longer waking up. When Miller had examined them, though, they seemed healthy, which made sense. The cyborgs wouldn't have wanted to risk the lives of potential new full cyborgs with an overdose.