A Warrior's Sacrifice (27 page)

Corwin patched himself to the Variant C.O. "Listen. We can't keep doing this. Everyone will die."

"Follow my orders, or you will be shot for mutiny." She cut the com.

Corwin tried to raise her again, but she had locked him from her com channel.

"Wait for my signal, but be ready to get your hands on a rocket launcher." The four Maharatha moved into position near the IGA Variants who were thus equipped. Why they weren't being used, Corwin had no idea — danger maybe; one missed rocket and everyone would die. They were doomed anyway, so better to take the chance.

Another wave of Variants stormed the barricade, laboring as they clambered over the corpses of the fallen. They added their own bodies to the growing pile.

"NOW!" Corwin shouted as he grabbed the rocket launcher from a nearby Variant and sent him stumbling with a kick. The others did the same, Kai managing to wrest two from his targets.

"Concentrated fire at the entrance. Go!" Corwin synced with the launcher and targeted
through
his armor so that his suit adjusted with mechanical precision. He squeezed off the entire clip of five rounds. The others did the same, Kai firing both his rockets simultaneously. Twenty five high-explosive rockets sped down field just a meter over the heads of the waiting Variants; they missed the attacking Variants by half as much and slammed into the defensive fortifications.

Chahal had more specific targets in mind. Her five rockets sailed over the heads of the defenders, each one striking the support guns. As they exploded, their ammunition ignited, spraying rounds into the backs of the enemy.

Of the barricade, almost nothing remained, rubble and blood and twitching pieces only. The remaining Variants crashed through into the bunker with hardly any resistance and no more loss of life.

The C.O. said nothing as the combat-dropped Variants and Maharatha secured the security bunker. They had to wait, defending the room from counterattack as a different battle raged inside a digital world.

A dozen Variants, each skilled at digital infiltration, sat down next to the main computer terminal and jacked themselves in. Within seconds, two of them died, their helmets shorting, their neural mesh melting their brain.

The digital assault required a full twenty minutes and cost ten of the twelve soldiers' lives, but they made it through the base's defenses. They gained full access to cameras and turrets, and they threw the doors open for the allied soldiers amassed just outside.

Abtinthae comprised the bulk of the allied army that now flooded in through the open gates. Almost two meters tall at the shoulder, they were insectoids that on their home world lived most of their lives in networks of tunnels that comprised their hives. Of the IGA member species, they were the most adept at the kind of corridor fighting they now faced.

They skittered past the exhausted Humans, bladed forearms tucked away under armored carapaces, faceted eyes watching every direction at once. They were a tide that swept through the base, hacking and clawing and sawing the enemy to pieces. But they followed only the main tunnels and did not bother to clear the rooms and smaller hallways that they passed; that was left to the Humans.

The four Maharatha found themselves reunited at the end of a long hallway. Doorways on each side were latched and bolted, with an unknown quantity of enemy soldiers lying in wait within.

The whole situation gave Corwin a bad feeling. They'd have to clear each room, break down each door, one at a time. Those farther down would know they were coming, or they could fire from their respective rooms and then retreat for cover.

"All right. Teams of two, each team will take turns clearing rooms. While one team clears a room, the other will keep watch in the hall. Phae and me, Kai and Chahal." Corwin felt a moment of guilt. It was not good for a commander to play favorites. He brushed it away.

Corwin and Phae took position in the hallway, cramming themselves into doorways for what little cover they provided. Kai rammed down the first door with Chahal on his heels.

A quick report from their rifles. "Clear," Kai rumbled.

When they returned to the hallway, it was Corwin's turn. He put his shoulder to the door and bashed it in. He found himself face-to-face with a surprised Choxen. Corwin's rifle jerked and the Choxen's stomach opened, Its contents spilling to the floor, the dying enemy soldier following after.

Phae found her targets, and two quick bursts dispatched them. "Clear!" she said, then moved back to the hall.

They worked their way down, leap-frogging over each other to the last door. The enemy learned and were better prepared each time for the Maharathas' attacks. A desperate sword thrust nearly punctured Corwin's side, and rifle rounds had critically damaged Phae's shoulder armor. Chahal had taken shrapnel from a grenade, and Kai had been knocked off his feet from the same.

Now here it was, the last room — and it was Phae's turn to break down the door. As she rushed forward, Corwin dyzued a change in the Sahktriya of the hallway. Everything became jagged, energized, like death had caught up to them, scythe flashing in the complex's smoldering ruins.

Corwin reached out his hand to stop her, but he moved in slow motion. Phae was perpetually just out of reach.

She put her shoulder down, bellowing. The door gave, first bending in the middle, then the hinges sheared. She rushed past the threshold.

Time resumed its normal pace.

A ball of plasma plumed outward, the blue-white ball of energized particles framing Phae for a moment, then engulfing her. The concussion blew Corwin backward to carom off the doorway behind.

Sirens screamed in Corwin's mind as his suit's computer highlighted sections of armor that had lost integrity. He had no hearing for their warning cry, no sight for their meaningless details.

On the ground before him lay a blackened suit of armor, recognizable only by its vague, Human-like silhouette. It popped and hissed as it cooled, each crackle reverberating in Corwin's mind like the rending of earth during an earthquake.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A hidden hatch opened, spilling off years of dirt and leaves. From the opening, thirteen armor-clad Choxen emerged, their weapons at the ready, their senses and bodies alert.

The Choxen base smoldered in the distance, and gunfire echoed through the green forest like the chirping of nighttime crickets. A stiff wind blew cold from the north, carrying away the smells of smoke and burned flesh that reached out from the base to suffocate the living.

They each carried with them a full wilderness survival kit with food, ammunition, and all the other things they would need for an extended stay away from civilization as they awaited contact from the Siloth.

This was an inevitable fate, Kavin realized as It turned Its back on Its once great Principality. It was leaving now, physically, but Its mind had been absent for several years as It searched for the relic. But the sacrifice hadn't been in vain.

Its hand fell unconsciously to Its waist, where a small pack held the relic and the com. All was not lost, this but a minor setback in the greater battle for domination and subjugation.

With a dismissing sniff, Kavin lunged ahead, running at near full speed to put as much distance between Itself and the dying base as It could. Its guards fell in behind.

Corwin awoke at a combat medic station. As he stirred, two attending soldiers in Power Armor jumped forward and took his arms, holding him down. Corwin fought; the two blank-faced soldiers looked like any others in the place.

"Corwin," Kai's voice rumbled down. "Corwin, it's us. Relax."

"Where's Phae?" He said, struggling, searching.

"She's dead," Kai said, voice deep, hollow.

"Wha…?" Corwin breathed. Rage ripped through his frail emotions, searing, burning out his insides until he, too, was nothing but a blackened husk. He struggled, flailing arms and legs, bending the table in his attempt to do something,
anything.

"Where is she?" Corwin cried. "Where is that wickt Guard General? I'll kill her! She wanted this to happen!" He fought harder, veins popping, armor actuators straining to fulfill Corwin's manic demands.

"Corwin. Calm down. Corwin. It — it's war. It's just what happens." Those words from Chahal's lips surprised everyone, even her. "There's nothing you could have done."

"No. No, there was." Corwin shook, tears slipping between the impact foam and his face, mixing with his sweat. His surge of energy faded, and his Voidmates relaxed their grips. Corwin's eyes moved, looked, but did not see. He heard their words of condolence but could not comprehend.

Over and again in his mind he repeated,
This is my fault. If I had had better aim, if I had been stronger … it's my fault that Phae died. Mine. I killed her.

He felt that wall slip in between himself and the raw emotion that had upset his mind; felt the anger and remorse and guilt fade away. The wall was a solid thing now, stolid and kilometers thick; an impregnable barrier that held his hurt at bay.

His eyes came back into focus, eyebrows knotting into their familiar places, lips curling downward to where they were comfortable.

Corwin sat up, brushing away Kai's helping hands. "Give me my weapons." His voice was as cold and impassable as his wall.

"Corwin … Corwin? Our objectives are complete. The remainder of the battle is in the hands of the Abtinthae now. We don't need to fight any more."

"You two can stay back, but I'm not finished. I will make them all pay." He stood, unsteady on his feet for a moment. Taking the weapons from Kai's hands, Corwin stumbled away without hearing their protests.

Corwin arrived at the rear of the advancing army. Body parts — friend and foe alike — covered the floor in a carpet of twitching limbs, torsos, and blinking dead eyes. It was horrendous, or would have been if it could have affected Corwin through his emotional barrier. As it was, the sights and sounds couldn't penetrate farther than his helmet. He was walled off, present though not fully a part of the battle.

And from the looks of things, he'd never be a part of it. The halls narrowed as they approached the ramp that led downward, choking the IGA army so only a small fraction could fight at one time. The rows of allied soldiers stretched out until they were lost in the twists and turns of the hallways, the smoke and debris of battle.

Despite the bottleneck, the allied force advanced at a steady pace, though it wasn't without cost. A never-ending flow of Abtinthae medics ferried injured and dying warriors to the rear, where they cauterized wounds or completed the removal of a limb that a Grunt had started. The Abtinthae were lucky in that respect: an amputated or severed limb would regrow without aid within a weak. Not all IGA species were so endowed, and while the Abtinthae bore the brunt of the battle, others still found a way to fight — and to die.

Those that could be saved were, and the others … some attempt was made to pull them off the front lines to die in peace rather than under alien feet. One of the Ismael went down, and it took a team of Abtinthae medics to haul him out. He didn't make it, dying on a cold plasteel floor, towing chains still looped across chest and arms.

Rows of the wounded lay shoulder-to-shoulder along the ground, the dead stacked like cordwood along the walls. The smell was atrocious to those who had scent faculties; the fecal smell of ruptured bowels; the metallic tang of blood; the sick-sweet scent of Abtinthae thoracic juices that ran along the ground in rivulets and dripped from the walls and ceiling.

Corwin pushed his way into the throng of soldiers. They moved readily enough, with only a grunt or chitter of protest. The formation compacted towards the front, the Abtinthae warrior drones pressing thorax to thorax to create an unbreakable, deadly line of slashing claws. Smoke and dust drifted in the air and obscured the lights; it fell like dirty snowflakes on the soldiers that waited for their chance to kill and die.

Corwin couldn't advance any farther — the drones were so compressed that he couldn't push through. He gathered himself, harnessing and channeling his Sahktriya. He projected Fear.

The drone's faceted eyes sparkled, and their heads rolled away in terror. The Abtinthae leapt atop one another in their haste to get out of Corwin's way, flung aside as if by an invisible hand.

Corwin was close to the front line now. Rockets flared between each side, erupting in gouts of flame that consumed lives. The armies writhed, forward and back, side to side, entwining, moving with and against each other like battling snakes.

Pulling three grenades from his chest, Corwin thumbed their triggers and tossed them over the thin line of allied soldiers. He followed them two heartbeats later, triggering his jump jets to launch himself up and over the embattled soldiers. He was dimly aware of the other two Maharatha that followed in the same way.

The enemy had arranged themselves like the Abtinthae drones, Grunts pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and front-to-back to create a wall of snarling death. The grenades fell amongst them. They didn't notice the puny things that bounced along the floor but didn't cause pain, even as the grenades detonated, gouts of plasma licking up to immolate flesh and armored carapace, to boil innards and bake brains. The beasts didn't flinch.

Those Grunts the grenades didn't kill, Corwin did.