As it of­ten hap­pened in mil­i­tary life, the worst day of Sobon's life was also his last. Some might even call that a re­lease, a mer­cy; Sobon him­self would have dis­agreed.

Sobon was a mil­i­tary cy­borg aboard the Crestan De­stroy­er Iri­des­cent Rapi­er, on ex­tend­ed pa­trol when they re­ceived word that a hos­tile force was set­ting up a por­tal re­lay out-sys­tem. They and a hand­ful of es­cort ships warped in to find that their force was out­matched by two bat­tle­ships, both hun­gry for blood. A fight­ing re­treat made the en­e­my pur­suit cost­ly, but the Rapi­er couldn't last.

As a Mixed Ma­rine, Sobon had no role in ship-to-ship com­bat, and was in a troop car­ri­er in the launch bay when a par­ti­cle beam blew out the Rapi­er's de­fens­es and sent most of the ship's crew to join the In­fi­nite Cy­cle.

The troop car­ri­er's own shields blunt­ed the blast--a safe­ty pro­to­col de­signed to in­crease sur­viv­abil­i­ty in ex­act­ly these cir­cum­stances--but the boat was still crip­pled, and sev­er­al of the more fleshy Marines didn't sur­vive that ini­tial shock. Sobon was a Class IX cy­borg, less than 10% flesh, and his sys­tems sur­vived in min­i­mal-pow­er mode, his brain and heart--the last rem­nants of his orig­i­nal body--bruised but still func­tion­ing. He could do lit­tle but watch as one of his squad­mates worked for hours to re­store pow­er, and chan­neled what re­mained of the aether bat­ter­ies and one half-crip­pled dy­namo into an im­promp­tu in-sys­tem jump us­ing her own flesh as a ma­trix.

In short, she drained the mag­ic bat­ter­ies and de­stroyed her own body to tele­port them clos­er to home. That would have been a no­ble but trag­ic sac­ri­fice, if it had worked.

They came out in a civ­i­lized part of the as­ter­oid belt, but rocks out­num­bered peo­ple by a fac­tor of thou­sands to one, and the jump al­most im­me­di­ate­ly smashed the trans­port into an as­ter­oid the size of a large build­ing. Sobon and at least one oth­er sur­vived that im­pact, but the crash only pushed them back into the rocky field, and it wasn't long be­fore the derelict ves­sel drift­ed be­tween two rocks, which gen­tly touched to­geth­er in the way that only two un­stop­pable forces could.

Sobon's con­scious­ness sur­vived, but most of his cy­borg body, and his last re­main­ing com­pa­tri­ot, did not.

It was an­oth­er eight hours be­fore, mer­ci­ful­ly, a metal­lic as­ter­oid rough­ly the size and shape of a small freight ve­hi­cle ap­peared from nowhere he could de­tect and put him out of his mis­ery. Con­sid­er­ing how long he had been wish­ing for death, it was long over­due. All he could do was won­der as the light glint­ed strange­ly off the front, as though it was shin­ing lights in his eyes, and then that light swal­lowed him.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

----------------------------------------

Sobon jerked sud­den­ly, his sud­den­ly un­fa­mil­iar body twist­ed in agony. He was un­cer­tain ex­act­ly where he was, but some kind of shod­dy im­plant--far too slow and im­pre­cise to be mil­i­tary, in fact, worse than any he'd ever used--slow­ly fill­ing him in to where he was and who was around him.

They were not friend­lies.

A large man, at least halfway to mor­bid­ly ob­sese with dis­gust­ing­ly thick jowls and a thick coat­ing of oily black filth cov­er­ing near­ly every ex­posed inch of his skin, was pin­ning his up­per body down, while an­oth­er, sim­i­lar­ly aw­ful man was stand­ing in front of him, wip­ing what looked like brass knuck­les with a dirty cloth. Both, by the time he reg­is­tered their ex­is­tence, were star­ing at him, and both had iden­ti­cal brain­less, malev­o­lent stares.

"Ere," said the one hold­ing him down, "looks like he's not dead af­ter all, mate."

"Coul­da sworn his breath­ing stopped." Knuck­les turned and squat­ted down, well into kick­ing range, and Sobon's in­stincts kicked into over­drive.

He threw his weight down, and his legs sprung into the air, land­ing his heel in the oth­er man's face. In the same mo­ment, al­though it felt like the grip on him was sol­id as steel, he twist­ed him­self free, putting every scrap of strength he had into push­ing him­self away from his cap­tor.

It took an im­pos­si­bly long mo­ment for him to re­al­ized he was hold­ing him­self in midair with trem­bling mus­cles, be­cause nei­ther the man he had kicked in the face, nor the man he was push­ing on with his whole up­per body, had moved an inch. They had no pan­ic, no flinch­ing in­stinct, as though not only had they felt no pain, but his weight was noth­ing to them.

"Oh, he's got some heat from 'is brush with death." Knuck­les reached up and grabbed Sobon's an­kle from right in front of his face, and Sobon re­al­ized in that mo­ment just how small he was com­pared to them--far small­er than his body should be, at least in re­la­tion to an av­er­age male. His cy­borg body had been lithe, yes, but of av­er­age height. "Best we beat that out of 'im in case he keeps on livin'. No good comes of a street rat that don't know his place."

Sobon's body was burn­ing with pain. He had bruis­es all over his tor­so, and now that he'd moved, it was clear he had at least one bro­ken rib, though it had mer­ci­ful­ly missed his or­gans. More than that, though, this lit­tle bit of ex­er­cise was drain­ing what lit­tle strength he had, and he re­al­ized he had noth­ing left to re­sist.

Knuck­les land­ed a blow to his side with those nasty brass knuck­les of his, and Sobon could feel his kid­ney light up with agony, that in­ef­fi­cient im­plant-like as­sis­tant feed­ing him data all too slow­ly. More blows came, and every one of them crip­pled him in a dif­fer­ent way, un­til he was curled up, dark­ness threat­en­ing to over­take him once again.

The last thing he heard was the oth­er brute snort­ing a laugh. "Cheeky bug­ger ain't even got a bit of qi in 'im any­way, what good is he? Worth­less street rat."