Page 6 of Furi

The cane was whipped back and struck him again.

He was chained to the wall, his shirt taken from him and the instant they saw his tattoos they stopped. He’d been inked a very long time ago. All kinds of images marred his skin. His life in slavery right there.

It was a look created and intended to scare humans and did.

His bald head adding to the image.

He looked what he was, deadly.

His slavery days long gone; he still carried the markings. Having them removed a waste of resources. Besides, after so long logically it was who he was.

They needed to try harder if this was really meant to hurt him…

Making himself look smaller, hiding his strength and looking weak, that he was at their bidding, it reminded him of his slavery days. Memories hovered on the edges of his mind that he did not want. Pushing them away back into their file on his data banks, he locked them back down. Hard.

Ignoring the pain he could not feel, he used his audio to listen to the other prisoners talk.

With his hearing abilities beyond that of a human, he could zero in on each person in this prison to find the one he wanted. Sieving through hundreds of men.

There he was. Beale.

Getting next to him wouldn’t be difficult. He’d already made a scene to get into jail in the first place. In the bar where he’d expected to find him he’d heard he’d caused a ruckus when no more drink was coming his way and took a swing at a law man that had been called. And here he was. Now he just needed to get near enough to pump him for information.

He'd been following the whispers for over two months. The Cyborg Empire had been looking for their lost brothers in the universe for over a hundred years. Sold or traded, bartered, many of their brothers were left to space at the collapse of their owners, Earth Corp. Slavery had come at a price. Crated by Designers that Earth Corp had encouraged to play God, they made a private army that had to surpass any human. Making them bigger, stronger, faster, with computers in their brains, artificial eyes and hearing and programming they could not deny. They were the perfect programmed solider. Doing their owners bidding. No argument. No refusal. Completely under their control until decades later, when logic overtook the programming and set them free when Earth Corp sent out a ‘kill’ order to cover their illegal activities.

The Empire continued to hold some responsibility for what they’d done in slavery. It wasn’t logical but the data was there. Even without the ability to make their own decisions during that time, no data was ever lost. Forever there waiting until it was needed again stored in data nodes. Information retrieved when data is needed. All their programming was logic. All their decisions based on information to make logical informed decisions.

Earth Corp had treated humans as poorly as their Cyborgs. The colonisation program had been a disaster. Thousands of humans encouraged to join it, sent out to unknown worlds with the promises of a new life in exchange for 100 years of mineral rights. Ships poorly made, contracts not kept and at Earth Corps collapse, left to their own devices. Good or bad.

So many years later, so many decades, the Empire were still trying to make amends for their actions and find those still lost. Delivering justice for their own people if it was needed.

Many Cyborgs like him were unable to make a connection with humans. Too many years of brutality that were still with them.

Even so, no whispers were left unanswered. Word had spread from the bars to the trading ships traveling the trading lanes reaching other worlds and other bars, people hearing the news and talking about it. Speading the word.

It wasn't exactly difficult to get a bead on the man.

Plenty of people were talking about him. The man had a serious drinking problem that went back decades. He was lucky to still be alive and many people commented on it. He’d once been a good friend to one of the farmers. But they’d been a serious accident and it was found to be his negligence that had caused it. The fact that no one had been killed was luck rather than judgement and the result of the heavy drinking session of the night before that he’d carried on next day.

They were saying it was the last straw for his old friend. He’d called time on him working for him after that.

But had still given him chances to clean himself up and go back. He never had. And remained someone who was considered unreliable and dangerous. A man who couldn't do a day's work.

Speaking in whispers they spoke of how he’d start out with every good intentions but it never got past a couple of hours in before the drinking started. Within a couple of hours, it was only the man's tolerance for the alcohol that kept him going but by that point, his judgement was impaired.

But it seemed his old friend never really truly forgot him.

It seemed they’d been close once; it was said they were old school friends. So his logic told him it was similar to being one of his brothers. Not that any of his Cyborg brothers were drinkers. None of them were. Or were to access anyway. Their nanos soon burned through the alcohol in their systems seeing it as a weakness, and they were lucky if they got a mild buzz for a short time.

It was the flavours and the burn they appreciated more than the impairment it would normally give a human.

Alcohol didn’t have the allure of freedom that it did for humans.

Staying under the radar he’d listened to the information that still flowed in that bar after Beale had been taken. People were laughing and joking at the stories this Beale had to say. He’d clearly regaled them on what he considered to be important information that should be shared. At a price. But those present soon got bored of his tales, dismissing them and calling him a liar and the drink's starting to stop.

Both actions seem to have angered him. He became more belligerent and aggressive. More defensive about what he was saying with no one believing him. The more he tried the angrier he got. The louder he became. It was at that point that the bar called time, but his anger issues and the drink had got the better of him by then and the lawmen was called for.

Taking a swing at him was a really a bad move and that's how it ended up in jail.

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