A Warrior's Sacrifice (9 page)

"I'm fine," Phae said.

"Just a few scrapes for me, sir," Chahal said.

"Good to go," Kai said. He almost kept the pain from his voice.

"Fine. Chahal, go grab our bikes."

"Sir!" she said, running off into the woods.

Corwin turned to his injured Voidmates. "The two of you will ride while Chahal and I run; it will give you a chance to recover while we track the Quislings."

"I said I'm fine," Phae said. She groaned when she tried to move her arm.

Chahal returned with the hoverbikes in tow. She pushed one over to Corwin and Phae and turned to help Kai aboard.

"No arguing. Get on." They stared at each other for a moment.

Phae snorted and climbed aboard. Corwin held the bike steady.

"All right," Corwin said. He turned towards the dark woods where the Quislings had fled. "Slave the bike to your suit, Chahal. The rest of you lock your suits down for stability. Here we go."

Kavin bounced on the balls of his feet, weight forward, ready to pounce, to strike, to rend and become victor. It wasn't long now. The Quislings had contacted Brixaal about the upcoming delivery of the relic. Soon. Kavin would have it soon; then even the ongoing failures would be worth it.

Over the last month, the Republic had pushed into Choxen lands, and Kavin, being absent, had left the running of the defenses to Its Base Commanders. Without Kavin's presence, they had resorted to fighting amongst themselves, and thus divided, they had failed.

Now, every day the Republic forces made steady headway northward, and they'd almost retaken all of what they had lost back during the Grand Reclamation. The Choxen lands that served as a buffer between Kavin, the relic, and the Republic were shrinking.

But it didn't matter. No. Kavin was in control, here and now, and It would sacrifice all the Choxen holdings of the world in order to deliver the relic unto the Makers.

Rage jerked Kavin out of Its reverie. A Grunt stood confused, snuffling the edges of its pen, pulling at the gate with taloned hands, mouthing the bars that kept it secure. Under normal circumstances, Grunts were engineered to be obedient, but those instincts could be overridden through torment, scent of blood, and most of all, hunger.

This one hadn't eaten in a week. Saliva dripped from the waving mandibles.

From Its waistband Kavin pulled a small dagger and drew the blade along Its forearm. It had to press hard to break Its skin, taut with layers of crisscrossed scars. Kavin gathered blood onto the blade and flicked it into the Grunt's face.

With a shriek, the Grunt tore at the gate and shredded the bars that stood between it and its prey.

Kavin was ready. It was always ready.

Auta Fall hated his job — hated his life, really. He'd been a no-nothing back in Toledo Alpha, and the Oniwabanshu had rounded him up with all the other no-nothings and shipped them out to this backwater hole. From there, he'd been happy enough to live the rest of his life farming and drinking and having sex, but one bad decision after another landed him in the lap of a few members of the Ashi-Kage, and once ensnared, he could not escape.

Again, Auta touched the small bulge in his pack. This would be his salvation. Once he did this, he was done; he could go back to his old life, and no one would ever know what he'd done or been a part of.

A voice from the darkness made him squeak in surprise. He tried to pull his sidearm , but a steel-fingered hand grabbed his wrist and jerked him backward, spinning, until his face was just inches from the Quisling Grand. The woman's hair was white, but despite her age, she had skill with the knife she'd pressed up under Auta's chin.

"What is it you want here? You were not expected," the old woman said.

"I, I have something for you — for Ot."

"Give it to me, and I will deliver."

"This is for Ot only. He told me to deliver it him, only him," Auta said.

"Fine." She let Auta go but disarmed him before turning. "Follow."

They came, after a time and an interminable distance, into a circle of shoddy vehicles that comprised the Quisling caravan. No lights shone at this time of night, but by now Auta's eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Grands leaned from truck beds, and children ranging from toddlers to preteens peered from underneath vehicles.

"Stay here," the woman told Auta just before he crossed into the inner circle of vehicles.

Auta did as he was told, aware of the eyes that gleamed at him in the faint moonlight and the quiet whispers as they sized him up for his worth in a trade with the Choxen. He also realized that she'd left him near their prison trucks. At this moment, the cages were empty, the chains coiled and hanging limp.

The camp was quiet — noise killed out here in the space between Republic and Choxen territory — yet there was a palpable feel, like entering a predator's lair. The cages, though empty, smelled like fear and feces and many unwashed bodies. Auta shuddered.

"What are you doing here?" a voice said just centimeters from behind Auta.

Auta's heart leapt, and a hand clenched around his mouth to arrest his yelp. The hand spun Auta around, and after a moment more and warning eyes, let go.

"O-oh. Od Rokek," Auta said, rubbing his hands together. "You surprised me."

A pistol appeared in Rokek's hand and punched its way into Auta's stomach, folding him over. "I am now Ot Rokek. The Republic killed my brother. You and your fellows were supposed to warn us of any changes." From the darkness behind Ot Rokek, a dozen other Quisling warriors drifted from the forest to join their families.

"We did! We are! I'm here to bring you an update of things in the city! Maharatha! A whole Void of them."

"We know. They are how I became Ot."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

"I debate if I should kill you now or not." The anger in the new Ot's eyes was fierce.

"Wait! I brought what you wanted. We found the device!"

The pressure of the gun eased. "You have it? Let me see."

Auta fished into his pack and brought forth the object. It was the size of a man's fist and hard, hard to the point that it felt brittle. It seemed to suck in the moonlight drifting down through breaks in the trees, and a single line that stretched across the entire circumference marred its otherwise perfect surface.

Auta didn't like the thing, it made him nervous. Besides what it did with the moonlight, it seemed to exude its own … something. Oppression, maybe. The thing seemed right at home here in the Quisling camp. As the Ot took the device from Auta's outstretched hand, a weight beyond that of the orb's unusual heft lifted from Auta's shoulders. He sighed.

"Now that we have what we came for, we have no need of you," the Ot said.

Auta raised his hands but was too slow, and the Ot's viper-fast strike knocked Auta to the ground. Blood dripped into one eye from a gash on his cheek.

Auta moaned, blinking and wiping at his eye to clear the blood away. He didn't try to get up.

It was that act of weakness that saved his life.

In the forest, Kai's chain gun spun, spewing hundreds of rounds into the unsuspecting camp.

The Maharatha had moved into place in a pattern that most tacticians wouldn't have liked, but it was one that Corwin
knew
would allow for the complete incapacitation of the Quislings. Kai fired onto the caravan from the west, Chahal covering him from a vantage high in the trees a little south from his position. Phae and Corwin had split up, Phae assaulting from the north, Corwin from the southeast.

For the first thirty seconds, the two flanking Maharatha had little to do; the ferocity of Kai's assault pinned everyone down while Chahal fired in rapid succession, decapitating the family leadership based on markings Corwin had given her.

Ot Rokek died with a snarl on his lips as Chahal's high-powered slug tore a fist-sized hole through his chest. The Ot's dead body fell atop Auta, who lay too stunned and afraid to move.

The Quisling warriors turned to engage the assault force to buy the Grands and the children time to escape. They fired at random into the trees as Kai leapt from cover to cover, firing in bursts. His rounds tore their meager caravan to pieces, the vehicles wilting like dying flowers.

His bullets didn't spare the noncombatants; there were none. Grands fired as they ran, focused on Kai so much that they did not and could not see Phae. She fired short, tight bursts from her assault rifle at the figures that glowed as bright as day through her suit's visor. They fired back, a few of them, but her cover was good, and they died before they were a problem.

Corwin was mobile, firing and advancing towards the fleeing Quislings. An engine went critical, a ball of fire and plasma engulfing its occupants. The trees to either side caught fire, adding smoke and heat and dancing shadows to the cacophony of battle.

Fire and move. Fire and move. Corwin kept his mind on the pure physicality of the task. There was a piece of him, deep down, that felt every death at his Void's hands. He'd been here before. He knew the fear and horror that these people felt, fear that he visited upon them. Bullets ricocheted off Corwin's armored hip. He turned, sighted, fired. The girl, barely ten, collapsed backward into a tree. Corwin observed her death from a place detached from emotion and ticked her off from the total number of enemy combatants.

"Close in," Corwin said. His voice was distant, disembodied. A Grand came at him from behind a tree, a knife in each hand. He was bloody, burnt, but the bloodlust, apparent in his eyes, prevented him from feeling anything. He was no threat to Corwin, but it didn't matter.

The Grand slashed. Corwin parried with the barrel of his gun, stepping back and to the side. A quick reorientation of his gun and a twitch of his finger sent a slug tearing up through the Grand's armpit and out his neck.

Movement caught Corwin's eye, and he rounded the tree, rifle ready. A child, maybe six years old clutched at a knife with wide, fear-filled eyes. He stood trembling over his crying brother — just an infant — who bled from shrapnel wounds.

Corwin knew what would happen. The older brother would take the younger's life, then end his own — it was how he had been taught. Corwin kicked as the knife flashed downward towards the infant's throat. His foot caught the older boy's hand in midair. The wrist snapped, the knife flew wide. The boy fell backward, crying out as he clutched his hand. With a controlled motion, Corwin struck the boy in the temple to knock him out.

Corwin left the brothers where they lay, pushing back memories of his own.

The gunfire was over, replaced by the crackle of fire, the hiss of electrical wires, and the moans of the dying. With pistols in hand, the four Maharatha stalked through the wrecked caravan to finish clearing it of enemies.

Phae paused. "You sure about this, Corwin?"

"You know the rules. There is no place for Quisling adults in the Republic."

A gunshot rang into the night.

A muffled cry came from the cab of the vehicle Corwin approached. He nudged the door open with his foot. A child wept, her face buried in her mother's bloody coat. Corwin lifted her from the corpse, and the girl shrieked and hit and kicked at Corwin's helmet until her hands bled. Corwin deposited her into one of the slave cages, a cage that the Quislings had used to house captured Republic children.

The Maharatha continued their search. They found four more children tucked away in armored compartments, but these were not by any means the only children in this Quisling family. Under Corwin's command, the Maharatha had not checked their fire, and Grand, warrior, and child had died alongside each other.

Corwin retrieved the two siblings that he'd left behind the tree and placed them into the cages with the others. These two, and five others, were all that remained of the forty-two Quislings that the Oniban had sent him here to destroy. These few were lucky to have survived.

Though perhaps they weren't so lucky.

Corwin knew what they'd just been through, saw himself reflected in their pale faces and withdrawn eyes. The Republic would split them apart, send each to a different crèche in different parts of the world, and deny them any contact with one another. Some of them, the two surviving infants, wouldn't remember a thing, and those a few years older might recall a life before the one in the Republic, but those would be glimmers of memories, just impressions. The oldest ones would recall all of this in horrifying detail.

They will relive this moment in their waking nightmares, as I have,
Corwin thought. Maybe one day they'd even become Maharatha, and the Republic would send them out to kill an entire Quisling family like he'd just done, and they'd collect the surviving children and the process would begin again.

Corwin's finger traced around his pistol's trigger guard. Was he really helping these children? Maybe the real help would be to end their future misery here, now, with a bullet.

"Corwin," Phae said as she put her body between her Void Commander and the children. "We've killed enough today."

Corwin nodded, but a minute passed before he holstered his pistol. "Kai," Corwin's voice broke and he cleared his throat, "Kai, call in a patrol to come pick us up. Chahal, see to the kids' hurts. Phae and I will stand guard."