by Ross Winkler
The Guard General's lips pulled back revealing all her hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. She let go and the boy sagged against the stake, relieved for a moment until he realized that he'd given away his secret. Horror swept across his face.
The Guard General's eyes dilated, and her head and neck swayed side to side like an Earth cobra as she found her opening. She cooed to the crying child — as best a reptile could coo — which caused the little boy to wail harder. He shied away and screamed for his brother in shrill, infant Quisling patois, "Bada! Bada! Lep! Lep!" Brother! Brother! Help! Help!
The Guard General gently untied the infant's bindings. Turning so that she could see the reaction of the older boy, she snatched the child into the air by one small arm. His shoulder cracked, and he screamed in pain, head lolling on a weak and fatigued neck. The elder brother went white, despite his dark skin.
"Tell me what I want to know!"
Still the boy said nothing, even as his brother screamed, held aloft by an alien arm.
The Car-karniss pulled the knife from her belt, rotating it so the wicked blade flashed. "Last chance."
"Stop!" Corwin shouted. His mouth worked without his control. "Let me speak to them first!" He felt disconnected, a wraith floating above a still-warm corpse.
The Car-karniss stepped forward to bar his way, but the Guard General hissed, and they let him pass. She turned to face Corwin, the bawling infant still clutched in her clawed hand.
"You think you can make them talk? With words?" Her laugh was a clearing throat and a wheeze.
She held the child out, and Corwin scooped him into his armored arms, careful, so careful not to crush his tiny form. With a quick movement of his free hand, he popped the shoulder back into place. The infant went limp in his grasp, fainting from pain and fear and exhaustion.
Reaching up, Corwin removed his insectoid helmet and set it on the ground beside him. No two Quisling families spoke the same dialect, but it was easy to make the leap to understanding. "Creap aceelasie intotaal."The aliens will kill you all.
The Quislings were surprised at first, unsure what to make of this obvious Republic soldier who spoke their language like a native.
"Wud de siemantatum? Siem in montaeeta," said the eldest of them, a girl. Why should we answer? We are Grunt food anyway.
"Bay." No. "Sie in Humanikka combinerta, ay e." You all will join the Republic, like I did.
They stiffened, and one of them sniffed. "Du en Badeclanger? Wud Badeclang?" You are a 'Body Trader'? What family?
"Badeclang Shura."
They sucked in a collective breath; the Shuras were known for their ferocity among the Badeclang. "Wud du en Humanikka montaform livoni?" asked the elder brother. Why do you reside in Republic armor?
Before Corwin could answer, one of the other children spoke up. "En tratiatori! En tratiatori in Badeclang." They all mumbled the same word, Tratiatori: — Traitor. A traitor to their people and their way of life, and as far as they knew, the only way of life.
Corwin felt himself shriveling in the heat of the children's scorn, witnessed his raw, emotional self retreat back behind the wall that Phae had so recently shattered. Here was a people very much like his own, yet they called him a traitor, and behind him, Maharatha that called him the same. There was no place for him to go.
"You have failed," the Guard General hissed. "Give it to me. The infant. Give it here."
Despite the stoniness that filled his heart, Corwin could not relinquish the child he held. The alien, through callousness of heart and blade, would kill him; she might waste all the orphans' lives attempting to find out something they wouldn't provide.
"No," Corwin said as he took his helmet from the ground and placed it over his head. "Give me the knife, and I'll get your answers." The voice projected from his helmet was mechanical now, a machine. Machines had no feelings. The infant bawled to fitful wakefulness, crying out from fear of the awful alien that now clutched him.
Corwin steeled himself for the task ahead.
He lifted the child by both feet, the boy wriggling his arms and legs as he shrieked. "You brought this upon yourselves." With a quick motion, Corwin drew the blade across the boy's chubby calf, the infant shrieking in response. A streak of blood, bright and vibrant despite the boy's dark skin, beaded and dripped down into his screaming face.
"Antatum. Fas," Corwin said. Answers. Now.
The elder brother's face was white, but he stayed quiet.
Corwin slashed the infant's leg again. "Antatum."
Still they balked. This time Corwin drew the blade vertically down the leg in a ten-centimeter gash.
"Hal! Hal!" the brother cried. Stop! Stop!
"Hal!" shouted another of the children. "Bay antatum in tratiatori." Stop! Don't give any information to the traitor.
The brother's glare threw daggers, and the rest of the Quislings kept quiet. The boy's mouth worked until he clenched his teeth and shook his head.
Corwin raised the infant high over his head again. The scene was too much to bear: a lizard with talon and tail, snouted face with lips pulled back into a savage, snarling grin; and an armored figure, vaguely Human, with a pointed and insect-like helmet and blank visor holding a cut and bleeding child above his head, knife poised at the boy's scalp.
"E gibba E antatum," the elder brother said at last, head hanging in defeat. I'll give you the information that you asked for.
With a hiss and a nostril flare, the Guard General commanded her troops to cut the older boy loose. One of her soldiers threw him over her shoulder and jogged away with the others.
The Quisling children, now untied, made no move to escape. They knew now that this tratiatori would kill them without a second's thought — he had carved up the most innocent of them, after all.
On a secure line, Corwin spoke to his Void. "Phae, Kai, take them back to the jail." They did as they were bidden, and if they cringed a little when he spoke their names, he didn't notice, and even if he had, he wouldn't have cared. "Chahal, help me."
The infant had grown pale from blood loss. Corwin threw the knife away and slid the infant into the crook of his left arm, careful to cradle the lolling head. He debated doing anything at all; he still had that drifting, out-of-body feeling, and knew that the infant's death would be meaningless in his current wraith-like state.
And yet…
Chahal jogged over, medigel and hypodermic gun in hand. She scanned the infant with her helmet even as she applied the medigel to the largest of his wounds.
"Heartbeat's low. Wickt, Corwin, he's lost a lot of blood. We need a transfusion, or he's going to die."
"Fine. Take him to the Inquest agents, they'll have the facilities."
Stowing her medical supplies, Chahal took the child into one arm and took Corwin by the elbow. "We're both going."
She pulled him onward, and he didn't fight her — couldn't even if he wanted to. She controlled his body, his mind still distant, separate, and ethereal. A gust of wind could have pushed him along.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The medical tent was a simple retractable awning pulled from the side of a square and unimpressive truck. White, aseptic cloth formed the external walls and divided the entire enclosure into a recovery ward and operating room. A knife wound victim from the previous day's capture of the city lay sprawled out on the operating room table, the attending Medic in the middle of reapplying medigel to lacerated flesh.
The Maharatha burst into the tent, bypassing several other wounded soldiers awaiting their turn with the Medic.
She was good, as any Oniwabanshu Medic had to be, and she didn't flinch despite her surprise. She responded with a glare and a frown, taking in the bleeding infant and Corwin's blood-stained armor with a glance. She went back to work.
"Ma'am," Chahal said, "we need your services…"
"What you need is to get out of my O.R."
Even Chahal bristled at her tone, but here again was that nebulous Oniwabanshu line. "Ma'am, it's an infa
nt." Chahal's voice was cold.
"That this one took a knife to." She indicated Corwin with a thrust of her chin. "Besides, it's one of the Quislings I looked at earlier. They don't get anymore of my time or the Republic's resources. Get out."
The finality of her glare ushered them from the tent with as much speed as they'd arrived. Chahal didn't fight the dismissal, for if she needed her own healing at some point, she wanted to get it. "Stay here," she said, thrusting the unconscious child into Corwin's arms, and went back into the Medical tent.
Corwin didn't bother to look down; he didn't want to see.
Chahal returned with an arterial faucet, hollow tube, and collection bag. She took the child from Corwin again and laid him down onto the soft earth. "Take your helmet off," she said as she scrolled through the bio readings she'd taken before.
Corwin did as he was bidden, though he remained stoic, impassive, detached, even as he watched the child's breathing slow.
A pinch at his neck caused Corwin to jerk his hand up, and he clashed with Chahal's gauntleted hands. She was ready for him and pulled his hand away with augmented strength.
"Listen." She stuck her featureless visor into Corwin's stony face. "We need a blood transfusion, and you two are a match. Chill the wickt out and hold still. Got it?"
Corwin grimaced as the device Chahal had placed onto his neck came alive and wriggled into and through his skin until it found the artery and punched its way in. Chahal attached the tube and bag and opened the faucet wide.
The faucet monitored blood flow and oxygen levels so as not to take too much blood and starve Corwin's brain, but the instant the faucet began draining blood, he felt lightheaded.
Corwin stared at the fading child on the ground. When Chahal had collected enough blood, she closed the faucet and removed it from his neck. She took a new faucet and repeated the procedure, this time at the infant's femoral artery, and reversed the flow of blood.
Drained, Corwin slumped to a sitting position, forehead resting on his own armored hands, elbows braced against his knees.
The other two Maharatha jogged up, helmets tucked under their arms. "The kids are…" Kai glanced in Corwin's direction, "safe."
Chahal sat back on her heels and blew out a sigh. "He's going to make it. Heart rate is rising to normal; BP back up. He'll be all right." She knocked Corwin on the leg. "You hear that? He'll be fine."
Corwin grunted. He was still so numb; his body felt cast in lead.
Chahal swaddled the now sleeping baby into an emergency blanket that she'd requisitioned along with the rest of her supplies and stood. "I'll take him back and give them care instructions." She turned to leave, then paused. "I'll make sure they understand that you saved him despite…" her eyes tracked up and down Corwin's blood-spattered gauntlets, "despite how it looked."
Corwin saw his body nod from the place where he floated, a slow, heavy nod of acquiescence rather than understanding. This was such a strange feeling, this floating thing. The body below moved to his thoughts, but with such sluggishness and time delay as to make it seem like he and it were communicating through lasers fired across vast distances of space.
"Corwin?"
He thought about moving his hands. Lo! His automaton doppelganger carried out his command. The blood that stained his sneak suit had darkened and even begun to fade; the living suit absorbed the blood, brimming with life and newness, for fuel. The suit's cells would break it down into its constituent elements and then recycle it — perhaps even into the pharmaceuticals that would keep Corwin alive, the great circle of life where the young worked and bled to feed the needs of the old.
"Corwin." A hand pushed at the automaton's body.
Time seemed to move slower in this ethereal realm. Corwin watched as Phae's arm pulled back then slogged forward in a parabolic arc.
Corwin's head snapped to the side as the powerful blow struck him square in the jaw. The suddenness of the impact, its ferocity, and the carnal nature of the pain that it engendered brought him back from that faraway place. He felt a prick at the base of his neck as his suit administered some healing nanites. He tasted blood.
"WHAT?" he said, leaping to his feet, fire in his eyes.
Phae thrust his helmet into his face. He had to catch it or risk it breaking his nose. The movement upset his balance and killed his angry lunge. "You have a message."
He slid his helmet on, and rage bubbled forth into a snarl as the Guard General, in all her reptilian smugness, bared her sharp teeth through the video message.
"Finish with the Human whelps. We leave at 1800 Earth time to assault the Choxen base. Give us victory or give us your lives."
Corwin ripped his helmet from his head with a growl. "We assault the Choxen base at 1800."
"What do we do until then?" Kai asked.
"Whatever you want." Corwin jogged towards the vacant city. He passed by Chahal who raised a hand to indicate she wanted to speak to him. He kept on running.
They found him in the bar where they'd eaten a few days before. The building was empty now, a few chairs resting askew from their tables. Behind the counter the scent of unwashed cups and plates mingled with beer that continued to ferment. Flies buzzed in their jendr feeding frenzy.
Corwin sat at a table near the front, a bowl of strawberries, a pitcher of cream, and sweet bread set out before him. He trimmed the leaves and stems from the red fruit with a knife.
The three other Maharatha paused at the door. With an unspoken word, Chahal and Kai split away from Phae and went into the back to find something to eat. Phae approached Corwin, slowly. She recognized the knife in his hand.
"You all right?" she asked, keeping the table between them.
"Fine." He continued to cut strawberries; their flesh stained the knife and his fingers. Juices dripped down into the bowl.
"I don't believe that."
"Sometimes," the knife flashed as it beheaded another strawberry, "you have to do things, awful things, and you have to be fine with it. I'm fine." He set the knife aside. Red dripped from the blade onto the table.
"Do you hear yourself right now? You sound like you did when we first met: withdrawn, hostile."
"A strange judgment coming from you." He stared at Phae, and she held his gaze until he snorted and looked away. Taking up one of the brown loaves, he crumbled it into his bowl and dumped the strawberries in afterward, then poured the cream on top. "It doesn't matter anyway. I'm fine. It will all be fine. Everything's fine."
Phae moved to stand beside him. She pushed the knife out of his reach. "You aren't fine." She took his armored hands into her own. He didn't fight her.
"You had no other choice."
Anger flared up again behind his hooded eyes. "Didn't I?" The moment passed, and his head sank until chin touched chest. "Didn't I?" he asked again to no one in particular.
"No, you didn't." Phae placed her hands on his shoulders. "You saved his life."
"I tortured him! In front of his family!" It was a volcanic eruption, bright and hot and burning, but it faded just as it began. He sank back into himself. "I've scarred him forever."
"Those scars will heal."
Corwin brushed her hands away and stood, chair tipping over backwards. He flung the pitcher against a far wall, screaming, "THOSE AREN'T THE SCARS I'M TALKING ABOUT!"
Phae didn't flinch; she knew anger. "Neither was I."
Corwin breathed hard now, lost in a movie that played behind his eyes. Phae reached out and pulled him in close. Corwin sank into her embrace, burying his face in the crook of her neck.
Corwin couldn't bring himself to … to what, he didn't know. Cry, maybe. That might have felt good right now, but he couldn't summon the strength. He was still too drained to feel, tired beyond any physical exhaustion he'd experienced before. He wanted to crawl into bed, pull up the covers and forget this world, his life, ever existed.
Corwin took a breath, inhaled Phae, breathed her back out again. Hugging tighter, he tried to make them one, a sing
le flesh so that maybe her strength would be also his.
Their armor stood between them, a chitinous shell that kept them physically apart. Phae reached across that narrow gap to grasp her lover with tendrils of Sahktriya. She gave him some of her strength, took some of his pain, his burden — and bore it all with a sad smile.
Pulling back, Corwin looked at her. He was better now. He wanted to thank her but couldn't make the words. He kissed her on the forehead instead.
Phae looked at him a moment, nodded.
Corwin righted his chair and sat down. "Would you like some?" he asked, gesturing at the food.
"Sure," Phae said, sitting in the chair beside his.
They ate in silence, passing sad and knowing smiles back and forth, enjoying each other's company, relishing the brief moment of emotional calm.
Six hours later they were ready — emotionally, physically — and stood outside the Guard General's tent. She had kept her place within the Accession's walls. The burned husks of tents hadn't been torn down or removed; they remained a constant reminder of the Schism that threatened. Of the dead and injured from the previous day's battle, there were none; they had been lifted back to the safety of orbit and been replaced with thousands more, ready for battle.
It seemed the Order of Accession had far more resources than the Maharatha had first believed.
With Phae's encouraging hand on his shoulder, Corwin pushed the tent flaps aside and entered. The abode was as ill appointed as he'd expected. The welcoming warmth of the Diviner's tent seemed garish in comparison with the barren walls and floor of the Guard General's. A table stood in the center of the room, upon which rested a holographic projector. A map and data fields floated in the air above.
In the corner farthest from the entryway, the Quisling child sat on the floor, hunched to accommodate the wrist and ankle shackles that held him. He looked up with dull, passive eyes as the Maharatha entered. Flashes of fear, anger, and hatred passed across his face.