A Warrior's Sacrifice (34 page)

"Anyone see that?" Kai asked from his position on a ridge opposite Corwin. "Signature looked like an auto-turret." It would be the sixth they had found during this stretch of their journey.

"Yes. Mark it, and let's head back."

"Understood."

In the frozen marsh below Corwin's position, a ghost shifted back to the safety and cover of some trees. Corwin watched as the ground around her began to heave.

"Hadil, stop!" Corwin said.

Up from the ground, a small disk lifted. It wobbled as snow and ice strained its servos.

"Sensor Disk!" Corwin said.

Hadil turned, shouting "Wickt!" as she leapt forward to try to grab hold of the thing. It was too fast. It sent out a small cloud of snow as it evaded near the ground, then shot like a bullet forward towards the sensor net.

Corwin pulled his rifle up, but from this distance a shot from his weapon would set the alarms ringing even if he hit it. This mission would be over before it really began.

Before it could cross into the sensor net and deliver its damning payload, sparks erupted from its back. It spluttered, small body flapping like a dying fish before crashing into the ground just meters from the enemy sensors.

Silence on the lines as hearts thumped and minds raced to understand what had happened.

"You're welcome," Chahal said, a smile in her voice.

"Hadil, get over there and grab it. Everyone else withdraw."

The shimmer that was Hadil crept forward, she and her suit tweaking its electronic countermeasures as she neared the line of the sensor net. With slow, cautious movement, she knelt down, two dimples appearing in the snow where her knees touched. Taking the disk by the edge, she slid it backward across the frozen ground, drawing it into the aura of her reactive camouflage.

As Hadil stood and retreated, Corwin breathed a sigh of relief. Those wickting disks. They were made of a small power unit, a motor, and a shell to house it all. The Choxen used them throughout their territories as secondary detectors that activated given high enough nearby seismic activity. The only reason they'd spotted this one was because they were moving so slowly.

Though because they were moving slowly in the first place, Hadil should have been able to walk softly enough to avoid setting it off. He'd have a chat with her as soon as they were safe.

Once Hadil had climbed up out of the marshy lowland, they turned north for two kilometers before turning back west, nearly retracing the steps they'd taken just a few hours before.

At one of their stops along their new tack, Corwin used the com system to draw Hadil into an isolated channel. "What happened back there with that disk?"

"Unlucky, I guess."

Corwin could hear the cringe in her voice. She'd expected this conversation.

"Don't lie to me." Corwin surprised himself with how harsh he sounded. He shrugged it off; lives were at stake. "There's no reason that you should have set it off."

"Yes I … I'm just tired."

"We're all tired."

"I lost my focus. It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't. Too much is riding on this."

"Sir," she said.

Corwin switched from their private com channel to the Void's. "We're moving again."

They ran back to the western border, hooked north two kilometers, and then returned to the east, scanning and marking and tracking everything they found. The solitude, complete desolation of landscape, and constant danger wore on the four Maharatha. They snipped at one another, and long hours passed between even the briefest communications beyond what their mission required. Out here with just the four of them, it seemed like civilization had dissolved, and all that remained were the rocks and snow.

As sunlight sprang up from the east, the Maharatha climbed the ridge that would become their campsite for the next several hours. Corwin assigned the picket order, and his people accepted it without a word. They found what comfortable positions they could and fell asleep.

Corwin had taken a prone position to look out through several fallen trees. He regretted this decision now as the position cramped his neck and shoulders. He could move, but with the sunlight full upon their position, it would require him to do it at a snail's pace, and that would be more trouble than it was worth. Not that it would really matter; everything was quiet in the valley below. Silent.

So much silence.

The silence ate them up. Even Corwin, who enjoyed solitude, began to feel it like a weight pressing on his chest until it became difficult to breathe. He wanted to get out of his suit. He wanted a shower, too, and to eat real food and drink something other than his stale sweat recycled into water, and to use a toilet like a Human, not just soil himself like an infant.

He frowned again as his eyes scanned the countryside down below. Infants. The word triggered memories he'd rather have left hidden. Corwin squinted his eyes to block out the blood, but it only got worse. The blood of the child he'd gashed filled up the space behind his eyes until he couldn't think straight. Through sheer force of will, Corwin beat the memory down, pushed it back to where it belonged behind his wall.

That's been happening a lot lately,
Corwin thought as his vision cleared.
Too often.
These long turns at watch left him open to memories better left forgotten. They crept up behind him in dreams or rode through on triggered words or random thoughts — and they seemed to be getting worse. So far they weren't a problem, just an annoyance, really.

He focused himself on the distant horizon and watched a small rabbit emerge from its den and scavenge. He counted the rocks in his field of view. The focus of the task settled his mind, and he slipped into a meditative state where he could just lie there and observe and forget about everything else.

As Corwin's turn at watch ended, he spent the last fifteen minutes rolling himself over onto his back for a more relaxed sleeping position. When his alarm beeped, he awakened Hadil, closed his eyes, and slipped away.

Kavin's control was breaking. It had killed one of Its guards today, the idiot! — consuming five times Its allotted ration. Kavin had been left with little recourse but to slit Its throat and leave the body to the cold and animals. Now they were out food and a warm body for the watch and the hunt.

They headed northward through the trees, making for the northern edge of the boreal forest where the snow never melted and nothing larger than grass and moss could grow in the few short months that this land called spring and summer.

This area was still under Choxen control, and it housed the last surviving base from Its defeated Principality. Kavin longed to enter that base, to remove Its armor and eat Its fill of protein and drink clothxlotic until It fell into a stupor. At one time, Kavin could have done such a thing. Now, however, the Base Commander here would kill Kavin on sight.

Kavin had forsaken everything in Its quest to serve the Creators — a quest that now seemed foolish. It had abandoned Its duties and run as the Republic and IGA closed in. Kavin was no longer a Princip, It was now an interloper, a being no better than the Quislings that It despised so much.

Kavin led the way through the sensor nets. They passed close to the base, so close that Kavin and Its guards could feel the throbbing of the power generators beneath their feet. Kavin knew this area well, for It had helped install the defenses.

Kavin felt the rising urge to fight, and Its guards felt the same. They had penetrated close, slipped past the base's guards and electronic defenses. Kavin turned away and led the small band of outcast Choxen northward, away from the encroaching Republic tide and towards the border into the last remaining Principality in Normerica.

As they reached a place of relative safety, Kavin removed the com from Its pouch. Still no word. Sudden anger threatened to force Its hand closed and crush the tech, to kill the lie that It held in Its hand. Kavin forced it away. It would hear from the Creators soon. It had to.

Hiding in the scraggy woods, the Maharatha looked northward. The jagged band of trees would be their last refuge, since out on the snow-blown plain, even the browns and tans of stone and earth had been covered in a white ocean of frozen crystals.

Corwin turned from the bleak snowscape. They would be there soon enough; one more sweep eastward, then they'd turn north and be out in the nothingness. That was how Corwin felt now too. Blank. The endless hours alone, the constant stress, and the cold that seeped in despite the steady seventy degrees inside the suit, had eaten away at his resolve, his focus. Even his anger had lost its fiery edge, replaced instead by a dull, throbbing chill.

It was in his head, that coldness — that he knew for certain — but he still couldn't shake it or the feelings that it brought. Out here where emptiness and ice grew, there was nothing to distract Corwin from his memories. They seemed to be on a loop: the part he had played in his family's deaths; the destruction of the Quisling caravan; the torture; the Diviner; Phae. They played through his mind, washing out the whiteness of the landscape and replacing it with red. Replacing any of the warmth that Corwin felt with cold.

The other Maharatha had retreated into their own minds as well. They almost never spoke to one another, and when they did, it was terse.

Corwin just wanted it to all be over. Complete the mission, fail the mission, die. Whatever.

The last of the sunlight extinguished itself behind the horizon, and the four hidden Maharatha rose up, invisible, and continued on their trek.

The relic had Changed. Kavin rolled it around Its gauntleted hands, observing it with eyes unhindered by the helmet that Xe and the other Choxen wore to protect against frostbite and cold. It glowed, somehow, from somewhere, and yet the glow had no place in physicality; it was sensed instead of seen, though perhaps the Creators had the eyes with which to see.

Kavin knew what this meant: a Crisis drew near. It had read about these moments when many disparate strands came together. In these situations, depending on the timing of intervention, It could create more Schism in the Universe. It was also aware that in other hands, one could weave those strands into a greater act of Accession.

Kavin would not, could not, let that happen.

But Kavin was running out of options. It could feel the Republic closing in like razors on the back of Its neck. If It died, the relic would be taken and Xe killed, and the Creators would not receive what was rightfully theirs.

A gentle vibration in Kavin's pocked caused Its heart to leap, Its breath to draw inward with a hiss. Rolling the relic into Its left hand, Kavin pulled forth the long-dormant communicator. A face, hideous, tusked, appeared in the small com screen.

"My Creator," Kavin said, voice barely a whisper.

"It is I, come to collect the relic."

"I had begun to doubt…"

"Never doubt the Siloth."

"I apologize, Creator," Kavin said, bowing at the com.

"Send me your location."

Kavin did so without words. These data transmitted instantly, the Siloth responding with an erratic chomping of Its teeth — a sign of annoyance.

"You are too near the enemy's lands. I will meet you in six hours at these coordinates."

"Thank you, Creator. I have several loyal Choxen with me. Will they be able to ascend with us?"

"No. There is room for only one. I will contact you when I am close." The screen went dark.

Kavin stood, body and sexual organs erect and wet from the hormonal rush of impending victory. The time had come. Xe would become a god among Choxen. But first It had to get to the extraction point, across almost 200 hundred kilometers of open wilderness. It was far, but Its suit would grant Kavin the speed It needed.

Kavin returned to camp, kicking Its underlings awake. "Up! Up, you discarded younglings! We're moving,
now!"

Stuffing Its pack with only the bare essentials, Kavin flung it onto Its back and began running, heedless of Its conspicuousness or the guards It left behind.

Midday. The time when the world should have been warm and bright. Corwin felt none of those things.

Half his watch had passed, his Voidmates asleep under snowdrifts that had accumulated in the cold early-morning hours. Corwin cleared a space to see through and began once again to count the number of snowflakes that fell before him.

Something caught his attention. Movement far off in the distance.

Corwin zoomed in using his helmet's camera. It was a long line of soldiers, Choxen by the color and cut of their armor, and they ran, fast, to the north-northeast. Raising his rifle, Corwin watched them run, eyes jumping from the last in line up to the next, then the next.

This is entertaining,
Corwin's slow mind thought, a welcome distraction from the snow and white and the rocks and the incessant thoughts that pounded his consciousness for attention.

Corwin's eyes reached the leader of the troupe. He sucked in a breath through barred teeth, a growl escaping. The dams that held back the emotions he'd tried to drown broke with a simultaneous thunder that inundated all his senses. The walls that had held everything in worked, and worked well as long as there was a mind there to keep them in place. That mind was gone now. Corwin saw red. He smelled Phae's burned flesh; felt the Quisling infant's blood dripping down his arms and hands; tasted bile and sickening hatred.