A Warrior's Sacrifice (28 page)

He dropped his Sahktriya downward, grounding out to make himself heavier. He became a falling boulder, a thousand augmented kilograms of crushing weight that collapsed a Grunt's armored torso into itself. As he landed, Corwin used that same downward force to propel his sword and split another Grunt in half from horned head through armored groin.

Fury boiled inside despite the wall, and Corwin used it, lashing out with all the hatred and anger that he had repressed, gave it voice with his own, a raw and jagged scream that echoed inside his cavernous helmet. The Grunts around him shrieked as their animal brains registered a predator more terrifying than themselves. They shied away, this thing they couldn't comprehend, and Corwin cut them down with great sweeps of his sword.

Bodies and viscera flew. There was no room for maneuvering or finesse. Enemies assaulted from every direction, and Corwin killed them all, each swing of his sword fueled by white-hot fury that grew with every strike.

Corwin was not without injury, but the hurts of his body were so far away it was as though they belonged to someone else. As he kicked and shoved and bashed and stabbed, the last of the Grunts and Choxen died.

A cargo door blocked his path now, its two halves drawn closed and locked. Stepping to it, Corwin tried to pry it open. It was a futile gesture — he knew that in a very small corner of his mind, but he couldn't help himself. In anger and frustration, Corwin hammered at the door with the butt-end of his sword.

He stepped away, panting. As the fury that had burned in his veins began to cool, his own hurts started to make themselves known. His hip had been jarred; a foot smashed; one side of his neck armor had been torn away from its housing. Beyond the physical pain, the emotional ache boiled, a knife cutting, slicing, twisting.

He had to keep moving. "Someone open this wickting door!" he snarled into the general com.

From the mess of aliens milling uselessly behind, Chahal appeared. She waited down near where the door would retract into the wall, and she didn't greet Corwin with words, just a simple bend of the torso.

Guilt made Corwin shudder. He approached the Exilist. "You shouldn't be here," Corwin said. She couldn't be. If she were here, in the thick of the fighting, then she'd die too — like Phae, like his family, like his dreams.

"Are you ordering me off the front lines?" Chahal asked.

"Yes. I order you—"

"Too bad. We're in this together."

Kai appeared on Corwin's right, a mountain of armor sliding into place without a sound.

"Kai—" Corwin started to say.

"Shut it, sir. I want a piece of them too."

Corwin couldn't begrudge their presence — he longed for it, and that made the guilt all the worse: his emotions, his weakness, had again put these two in danger.

Hidden gears ground to life. The Abtinthae warrior drones surged forward, eager in their mindless way to slay and be slain. The door split down the middle, the gap widening until first one of the warrior drones, then three, then twenty could push their way forward.

They all died. The enemy concentrated their fire at the opening, and drone after drone ran forward, fearless unto death.

There was a tipping point, still long before the gap had reached the three Maharatha, where the Abtinthae made headway. They poured into the room, slashing and killing, pushing the enemy back to create a small beachhead.

The door edged near. The Maharatha could dyzu the battle, dyzu the Grunts' hungry, predatory Sahktriya reaching forward, a hot wind eager to rend limbs, spill guts, and devour what remained. The three Humans tipped their swords forward so whatever lay in wait on the other side of that door would meet instant death — and maybe ensure their survival for just a few moments longer.

Then the door was past them, and they charged forward to meet the snarling enemy. Corwin drove his sword through the first Grunt to cross his path. Ducking, he twisted as he pulled his sword free and drove the tip up and through the next Grunt's armored torso. Kai fell in to Corwin's right, each guarding the other's side as they pressed forward into the morass of death.

This was the grow chamber, the one room that every Choxen base contained, and the single most strategic place. A warren of corridors and interlinked catwalks ten floors high awaited the IGA troops. On both sides of each walkway, Grunt growing chambers hummed, fully active as they grew the alien soldiers from a tiny clump of starter cells into a fully functioning killing machine in less than two hours.

Chahal stumbled from a Grunt's lucky blow. Corwin cut the Grunt down, but in doing so he left himself open. He paid with a claw to the side, his armor tearing away in flakes as the claws dug through and gashed soft skin underneath. With a cry of pain, he lurched, turning and pushing hard on the creature's face with his rifle barrel, firing at the same time. Even at close range, the bullets ricocheted off its armored head, but it stumbled and gave Corwin the time to hack off its head.

Every move hurt now, even with painkillers.
Whatever,
he thought,
a small price to pay to ensure Chahal will walk out of here.

One of the grow tanks opened and disgorged its contents onto the grated floor. A Grunt stumbled forth, newborn but deadly despite its infancy, and fully enraged by the smell and taste of battle in the air. Corwin chopped through both the intervening door and Grunt behind it.

The enemy fought for every inch in this win-or-die struggle, and the ground told the story of that fight. Bodies piled up, tripping soldiers on both sides of the battle; gore dripped down through the grated cat walks; electrics sparked and popped, casting a flickering dissonance into the already chaotic mess that was the grow room.

Six hours after the assault began, the last of the enemy died. The allies, weary, shaken, cried out in victory — all except for the three Earthling Humans.

They had nothing to celebrate, for this was not their fight, yet they had paid with one of their own.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A small personnel transport pulled up to the first of two checkpoints. It was of obvious IGA design — that the Inquest agent could see by its sharp angles and the alien glyphs stenciled on the sides. He stepped forward as the vehicle's darkened windows retracted. Behind them were grim faces: a woman in the back with sweat-clumped mats of curly hair and a bear of a man in the passenger's seat. The driver, a dark-skinned man with sunken eyes that despite his young age had the frown lines of a man at least a century old, held out a holographic projector. It flashed into life displaying the Maharatha symbol.

As the guard stepped forward to take the projector and scan it, a malodorous stink wafted from the open windows: sweat, fear, sorrow, death, and somewhere, lingering, was the smell of charred meat. This was Death's own carriage — and it was driven by a Quisling-turned-Maharatha.

The guard waved them onward, shuddering as they passed. He pulled out his com and radioed ahead. Whatever these people were, they weren't to be wickt with.

Outpost G57 was dead. Its inhabitants had been thrust out into the tenements and makeshift prison by the Inquest Investigators to form an untidy ring of fear and suspicion around the once thriving settlement. Everyone was too busy to celebrate the return of the Maharatha — the only Earthling victors of a battle that had opened up the entire sector to safe settlement.

Just inside the city's gate, Corwin stopped the carrier. He had taken a hover litter from one of the many medical stations inside the now conquered Choxen base, and it had required only a deep-throated growl from Kai to make the attending Ordeiky medics back away. They had retrieved Phae's body from where they'd left her after the explosion — they'd had to just leave her there … they'd had to — and ferried her charred husk up and out of the base.

They changed from their armor and, after searching for just a few minutes among the jumbled troop carriers that had transported the Abtinthae soldiers to the base, they had found one that fit their needs.

Then they'd stolen it.

With a gentle pull, the litter came free, and Kai and Chahal maneuvered it clear of the carrier. Corwin pressed the return key and shut the door. The vehicle would drive itself back the way they'd come, and with luck no one would know that it was missing — not that Corwin cared at all right now. He'd burn them all down if he needed to.

They walked in silence through a muted city to the recycling center. Wearing only their second skins, the vacant streets and the eerie silence made the slap of their bare feet on plasteel seem loud.

The machine sounds of the city's recycling center — humming fans, whirring gears, sliding, scraping conveyor belts, and the roar of the incinerator where they were destined — grew louder as they approached. Kai and Chahal hesitated. Corwin pushed past them, tugging the litter after him.

The drone of machinery was comforting, a dull, continuous throb that echoed Corwin's broken heart so that he could, almost, ignore its ache.

Tall bins stood on either side of a conveyor belt that ran the length of the building, their chutes empty and crusted with refuse. The belt itself wasn't in any better shape, but such was the fate of those that gave their lives to the Republic.

They walked Phae up near where the belt terminated into the incinerator, so close that its heat caused sweat to bead on their foreheads and necks.

Corwin gripped the edges of the litter, ready to upset its balance and tip Phae's body onto the track. Chahal placed her hands atop his.

"Do you want to say anything?" she asked.

Corwin blinked. He didn't understand the question.

"Don't the … don't you say anything when you bury your dead?" she asked.

Corwin frowned and looked from Chahal to Phae and back. "We do. She isn't one of the Badeclang. She's en Anderser. I have nothing to say."

Chahal's eyes clouded. "Fine.
I
have something to say." She cleared her throat and took a breath. "Death and life are one and the same; each a side of the same knife; the ocean where the glacier's melt returns. In death, let Phae remain alive in our memories, a teacher of things to do and things to avoid."

Corwin froze in place, eyes locked on the side of Chahal's face. What she'd said was almost verbatim what his people spoke at their own death rites, but he didn't care — not right now and maybe not ever. He wanted to eat. He wanted to sleep. Most of all, he wanted to forget.

Chahal nodded. "That's it." She stepped back, allowing Corwin to retake his position.

He looked at Phae one last time, the charred husk of the only woman who had given him the time of day; the only woman who might have loved him as he'd loved her. Burned flesh lingered in the air; her face and body were hidden behind the bulk of the power armor that had fused itself to her. Corwin upended the litter, and Phae — the piece of char that had been Phae — fell to the garbage-encrusted conveyor belt with a clunk.

Corwin turned, not willing — not caring — to see her go. He left the recycling center, towing the litter behind, his face chiseled of stone, his heart frozen.

Sometime later, they found themselves in the bar they'd frequented before. They'd showered, dressed, and hadn't spoken more than a few syllables to each other in the intervening time.

The bar, like the city, was empty; just the three of them and the oppressive silence that clung to everything. Again, Corwin took the container of strawberries and milk from the lukewarm refrigerator, the biscuits from the pantry, a bowl from the cupboard, and, leaving Kai and Chahal in the kitchen, he sat as far from their usual table as possible.

Corwin crumbled a few of the stale biscuits into his bowl and then opened the container of strawberries; the humid, sweet scent of overripe fruit wafted out at him. He scrunched his nose. Mold grew on several of the berries, and all of them were dark red and squishy, lying in a pool of their own juices; the leaves and stems were brown and wilted.

The cream, he knew, would have gone off as well. He poured a little from the pitcher onto the stale bread. It oozed out in uneven globs.

"Wickting Inquest," he mumbled aloud. When they quarantined a city, they shut down most of its utilities, keeping only the water, waste disposal, and city-run refrigeration units online.

Setting the bowl into the container of strawberries, Corwin then placed the pitcher of bad milk on top. He stared at it for a moment and then swept the whole rotten mess onto the floor.

He folded his arms atop the table and buried his face inside.

A clink and a rattle brought Corwin back from wherever he was. Chahal had set a plate of protein cubes on the center of the table, and Kai had delivered utensils plates and cups for them all. In his other hand he held three tall bottles of clear liquid.

Corwin looked up, his eyes red. Had he been crying? He wasn't sure. "I…" he cleared his throat. "I don't want you here. I want to be alone."

"Too bad," Kai said. He set a bottle down before each of them, and then held his aloft. "To Phae."

Chahal took hers and lifted it. "To Phae."

They both looked at Corwin.

Taking his bottle, but without a word, Corwin lifted it up to theirs. They knocked bottles, then each tipped back, drinking down the harsh liquor. After two swigs Chahal and Kai stopped. Corwin kept going: three, four, five pulls off the bottle. It burned, warmed; it dulled the sharp knife of his guilt.