A Warrior's Sacrifice

by Ross Winkler

  Huddled around the projector table, alien heads bobbed, and a low murmur of alien sounds — chirps, clicks, gargles, hisses— emanated from the crowd. Corwin picked up snatches of conversation as his helmet translated what it heard, but those snippets were disjointed and confusing.

  Mobile Sergeant Shota stood off to one side, arms crossed, eyebrows pinched together. The Maharatha joined him for no other reason than Human solidarity. "I've been ignored since I entered," Shota said in a low voice.

  At a hiss and a whip of the tail, the Guard General dismissed the gathered soldiers. They filed out, casting hostile glances at the five Humans. The Guard General approached, hands clasped behind her back, a toothy grin stretched across her snout.

  "The plans are set. You four Commandos," she used the word most easily translatable from her language, "will ascend to low Earth orbit. You will combat drop with the main invasion force."

  Corwin grimaced behind his helmet's visor. A "combat drop" essentially turned the soldier into a projectile weapon that could be delivered behind enemy lines with equal precision. The casualty rate was high but often well worth the price in lives — but it didn't make Corwin feel any better. He had the sense that she wanted to put the Humans into harm's way.

  "I hope," Corwin said, "that you will provide us with power armor. Our current suits are for stealth and infiltration, not direct assaults."

  "Of course. IGA rules stipulate that probationary Sentients be provided adequate arms and equipment when working in conjunction with IGA member Sentients. We will provide you with power armor aboard ship."

  Shota cleared his throat. "Pardon me, ma'am. How would you like to utilize me and my—"

  The Car-karniss commander cut him off with a hiss and jagged slash of tail. "You will go back to your governing body in disgrace. You do not get the honor of dying for our cause."

  "Wh-what? May I ask why?" Shota asked.

  "You are of no use to anyone. Leave. You have dishonored your species. These four may redeem this government of yours. Speak no more. Leave." Her tail thrashed in the direction of the door.

  Shota turned to the Maharatha with a pleading expression. In that moment, he faced jendr before his peers and the politicians of the Beirat. He needed to make amends and somehow contribute to the recapture of the orb.

  Corwin could have asked the Guard General to include the Mobile Sergeant and his unit in the assault so that a small part of their lost dreng could be regained. Instead, he stared back at Shota, his helmet impassive, cold, like his face hidden within.

  As the silence stretched to an uncomfortable length, Shota's face changed. He clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. He jerked his head in a nod. Bowing to the Guard General, Shota turned and paused beside Corwin. "I will remember this."

  Corwin stared back.

  The Guard General hissed at Shota's back as he left the tent. "A transport awaits you in a clearing north of this tent. Go." She turned her back on the Humans, her tail just missing their shins.

  With little else to go by, they jogged north, passing through the rings of soldiers preparing for war. The Humans didn't speak to one another. Fear twisted their guts and occupied their minds, Corwin's most of all. He'd expected some sort of briefing, but instead the Guard General had thrust them out into space. He felt that he was leading a group of soldiers who were already dead; death just hadn't caught up to them yet.

  Their transport was a stubby thing. Three fins surrounded the rear rocket and a bulbous belly almost as round as the vehicle was tall. He would have refused to enter on grounds that it simply couldn't fly, but he held his tongue as three alien commanders, resting outside until the Humans' arrival, climbed aboard. Corwin led the way on.

  The ship was not built for Humans. The aliens that had preceded them, a Groaton, Ordeiky, and bird-like Kraw'ka'ow, were all smaller in stature. The low ceiling forced the plumage atop the Kraw'ka'ow's head to bend backward, and it squawked and flapped its wing-arms in annoyance. The Humans could only move about by bending their backs and walking with deep bends in their knees; Kai had to shuffle on his hands and knees.

  Crash harnesses hung against three padded walls. The Maharatha found a clear space and, with Kai sitting flat on the floor, watched the aliens secure themselves.

  The Humans soon found that there was no sure way to secure the harnesses about their bodies through normal means. They made it work by lashing the harnesses about their persons however they might. Kai used two.

  Kai had barely gotten his second harness snapped into the wall when the ship rose without warning and with a suddenness that made their stomachs lurch. The ship's acceleration drove them downward, and the crash harnesses in their jury-rigged fashion did little to absorb the forces that threatened to mash the Humans into the floor. Their suits were able to compensate, and after ten minutes of interminable crush and nausea, a violent shaking followed by weightlessness signaled their exit from Earth's atmosphere.

  They drifted for a time, the ship thrusting, spinning at unmarked intervals as it aligned itself with its destination. After over an hour with their nerves frazzled, the stubby ship accelerated. Corwin had the sense, in a way that his own physical senses couldn't describe, that Something Great loomed like a predator in the night, an oppressive weight preparing to swoop down to carry away its hapless prey.

  Then their small ship shuddered and something arrested their free-fall with violence. Their bodies whipped like rag dolls.

  An orbiting ship had come upon them at several thousand kilometers an hour and scooped them up into its forward bay like a bat catches an unsuspecting insect. Beams inside the mother ship caught it from the air, brought it to an abrupt stop, and placed it on the bay floor. The clang of sirens died as the external bay doors slid shut and atmosphere flooded back into the bay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Shaken, the Humans unfastened themselves and with slumped backs and on hands and knees made their way to the open cargo door.

  In the open hatchway, the Ordeiky Commander stopped and turned his oblong head and wide, bulging, fish-like eyes towards them. "Humans, the Guard General demands you leave your armor within this ship. It will be deposited to Earth for you." Then, with a snap of his teeth to emphasize the veracity of the order, he turned on his heel and left.

  Corwin frowned, shrugged, and went through the process of removing his armor. His Void did the same.

  Corwin looked around as he led the Void down the walkway. He had been into space on several occasions, and each visit was a disappointment. When he was younger he'd imagined that the starships were gargantuan creations, with wide hallways and tall ceilings, where a single cargo bay could house an entire city; that they were so large, he might spend his entire life within one without meeting the same person twice.

  But the imaginations of the young never include the necessities of adults. This starship was a behemoth like he'd imagined, with kilometers between nose and stern and from port to starboard sides. Yet despite the size, the cathedral-like rooms and expansive hallways were nowhere to be found. The reality was dreary and claustrophobic, for when traveling among the stars, every cubic centimeter had to be accounted for and put to use.

  In the bowels of the ship, where the fighters and cargo bays dwelled, transports ferried supplies and ammunition through tunnels lined with electrical conduits, air pipes, and various heating or cooling liquids. They reverberated with the ceaseless cacophony of ratchets, hammers, saws, and hydraulic lifts, and the tech crews shouted to hear one another over that constant noise.

  In the upper levels — where only crew dwelt — the halls were also adorned with pipes and conduits, though not to the same extent as the service tunnels. They were narrower, too, often converging into choke points to defend against enemy boarding parties. Most hallways ran the length of the ship and were so long that the lines that defined their edges converged into the distance, where they, and the people traversing them, seemed to shrink. Sometimes Corwin felt as though he were shr
inking with them and that when he returned to Earth he'd be no more than a few inches tall, compressed by the weight of a starship.

  And it smelled foreign. The recirculated air held the stink of aliens that the scrubbers could do nothing to remove. The smell was impossible to acclimate to, for a different alien stench seemed to emanate from each grate of the ship. Corwin longed for the poor ventilation of his crèche barracks, for while it smelled, at least it was Human and could fade into the background.

  There were no windows either, and that, Corwin felt, was the worst part; a window or two might have made up for all the gray plasteel. Here he was, out among the stars, a place he'd longed to go since childhood, and he couldn't see them. Corwin wanted to park next to a nebula and watch it swirl and coalesce, stars igniting for the first time in universal history — to wickt with the danger.

  The Maharatha paused at the threshold to the drop bay. Power Armor — the same used by the Republic's Tercio Caste — hung rigid and lifeless on wheeled racks, arranged row after row along one wall. Farther down, the silver, egg-shaped drop pods waited in their cradles atop the tracks that fed them into the ship's launch tubes.

  Along the back wall stood row upon row of Humans. They were Variants, to be sure, with the size and girth equal to that of Kai. As they waited clothed only in muscle, they remained in perfect formation, backs straight with barely three centimeters between the barrel chest of one and the muscular shoulders of the other.

  There were Humans out here. Their voices and their smell were welcome amid the foreignness of this IGA ship.

  Alien-driven tractors brought racks of Power Armor forward. The first line of Variants scrambled up, jamming themselves into their suits, and a Foralli technician driving a hydraulic lift then affixed the suit's thigh armor and breastplate. Still more technicians stood nearby with carts filled with tools and computers for last-minute diagnostics and repairs. Once the last piece of armor was in place, the driver would haul the rack of suits, now filled with their Human occupants, down to one of the empty drop pods, pick up a new rack of empty suits, and begin the process again.

  Squawking and a flapping of wings caught the Maharathas' attention. A Kraw'ka'ow stood near the hallway door, digital clipboard clutched in a feathered, four-fingered hand. "Humans! Humans! Out of line! You are out of line! Get back! Back on the instant!" A small translator cube attached to her throat converted the squawking to Human words.

  The Kraw'ka'ow wore a hardhat atop her avian head. Dirt and grease speckled her sharp, curved beak, and her yellow feathers had lost their sheen and were dim and dirty. A vest, overflowing with tools built for alien hands, hung over her back and around her neck.

  It would have been comedic, except when Phae chuckled, the bird-like alien leapt into the air with a flutter of wing-arms and brandished eighteen-centimeter talons in her face.

  "Go! Go!"

  It was a strange sensation to be pushed around by what appeared to be a lowly technician. The Maharatha dove into the stinking, surging, clamorous room, riding the shifting currents of aliens and vehicles as they made their way towards the rows of soldiers waiting for their power armor. The Maharatha fell into line with the Variants — the four slots at the very end of the last line.

  Kai turned to speak with the nearest Variant, a busty woman with shoulders twice as broad as Corwin's. "Whutya name?" Kai asked. He slipped into the Variant dialect that he'd spoken in his crèche.

  She glanced at him with a scowl but said nothing.

  "Yo. Dummy. Whutya name?" Kai asked again.

  She answered something though the side of her mouth. They were alien words, spoken with Human lips.

  At first Kai was confused, so he waited — as was his tendency — and listened to more of the alien sounds from the Variants around him. They all spoke the same language, one that was neither Republic Standard nor a Variant dialect.

  These were not soldiers requisitioned from the Oniwabanshu for this assault; they were aliens, flesh representations of the tithe that Humanity paid the IGA every month. These were Variants — Humans, but not of Earth.

  The realization made the four Maharatha uncomfortable.

  These Variants were resources with no future and no chance at freedom. Their purpose was to fight — and to die — for whatever machinations the IGA decided. Here they were now, waiting for combat, waiting for death.

  And they would die upon what to them was foreign soil.

  A wall, clear and unseen, dropped into place. It separated the four Maharatha once more from the Sentients that buzzed around.

  The four Earthling Humans kept quiet until it was their turn to don their Power Armor.

  For missions that required stealth and operational flexibility, Maharatha armor was unmatched. For assault missions like this one, the sneak suits couldn't contend with the outright firepower and durability of heavy Power Armor. As the row of Variants before them clambered into their armored suits, Corwin and his Void prepared themselves for their own outfitting.

  As the now occupied rack of power armor drove away, a new, unoccupied rack took its place. The Kraw'ka'ow technician who had buffeted them before screamed again, though this time without the use of a translator.

  The message was clear.

  Corwin sprinted forward with the rest of the line and climbed up onto the rack. Holding onto the top bar, he lowered himself down, pointing his toes so they would fit through the armor's openings just above the knee. With his feet planted, he leaned back and slid his hands into the arms, pressing through the foam padding until his fingertips touched the electronic pads in the suit's gloves.

  While Corwin worked his fingers and arms into place, a technician pressed first the thigh, then the chest armor into their grooves. Another haggard technician followed close behind and locked them down with a noisy ratchet gun.

  Corwin took a deep breath; now for the helmet. It hung above, attached to its charging station. With clumsy hands, Corwin reached up, fumbling to find the correct grip, his proprioception not yet accustomed to his longer, bulkier arms and fingers.

  The power armor's helmet was a single piece, the faceplate hinged at the temple. Unlike most helmets, it lacked any sort of visor. Once Corwin finished working the helmet over his ears, he pressed the front closed. The waiting technician slammed the throat armor into place and in an instant the world went dark.

  An electrical charge shot through the impact foam that lined the armor, the foam responding by expanding to fill any empty space inside. It locked Corwin's jaw into place and pressed his ears flat against his head. It felt like a python squeezed his torso until he could barely breathe, then relaxed. He was now deprived of sight and sound - which was an important step in the process.

  The neural integration of the Maharatha armor was a slow, gentle kind of thing that worked its way into the mind like a calm creek that flowed around and embraced the preexisting senses; not so with Power Armor.

  An icon appeared as the computer booted and linked with the neural mesh that covered Corwin's brain: orange at first, pulsing until it flashed to green. He perceived the icon as if it were projected onto the back of the helmet's faceplate. In reality it was an electrical impulse that stimulated his optic nerves.

  Vision dawned like the rising sun. It wasn't vision in the normal sense, seeing what the eyes saw; it was a full 360-degree view that bypassed the normal route of sight so that his brain perceived and registered input as soon as it was available. Sound worked in much the same way, the volume at first low, a dull throb, then rising in intensity until it was all-consuming. The experience was overwhelming, and he swooned as would a newborn child fresh from an Iron Womb, seeing and hearing everything for the first time and finding it too much to bear.

  As his sense disorientation faded, his weapons came online. The Droth-metal sword hummed at his side. The rifle was loaded, full of life and energy and explosive killing power. They punched their way into his brain's homunculus — into his very sense of being — like an extra arm
or leg. The suit's capabilities became his own, the jump jets, the stamina, the super strength. They appeared in a flash as if they were latent powers, forgotten, but now reawakened. Amongst it all, he felt the slightest of pinpricks on his side — a hypodermic needle so the suit's computer could monitor his condition and supply any drugs or healing nanites that he might need during battle.

  As the technician drove the rack from the staging area to the drop pods, Corwin began the exercises that would help his brain adjust to his new body. Articulating every joint, he touched elbows, shoulders, hips and knees; touched his weapons, reached up and tapped the metal frame on which he hung. He did it again. Then once more.

  The rack rolled to a stop. Reaching up, Corwin lifted his body from the hook and dropped to the ground. The fall jarred him more than he expected — it always did. He recovered with a few mincing steps and headed off to his designated drop pod where his mind's projection of a HUD indicated.

  Corwin's first few steps were labored, sluggish. He still tried to move his Human body inside the suit, to push the heavy armor along, like wading through water. By the time he reached the egg-shaped drop pod, he and his Void moved easier; their minds had "learned" that the armor weighed as little as their own skin.

  Climbing the temporary ladder affixed to the outside of the pod, they dropped down and seated themselves on the short, padded ledge that ringed the inside wall. It was cramped, the armor-clad soldiers bumping one another at the shoulders as they worked to strap themselves in and arrange weapons into safe positions.

  The inside of the pod was as spartan as the Republic's own. The sick gray-white of impact foam covered every surface but the floor, and beyond that there was nothing: no sensors, no lights. The pod's computer would pipe everything they'd need to know into their brains through their helmets. The ceiling panel ratcheted closed, blotting out the bay's noise.

  The pod was silent, dark, and Corwin could again feel that clawing claustrophobia as he sat and waited. An icon appeared, the rank and insignia beside the picture of a Kraw'ka'ow denoting the rank of Trinary Star Corporal, the commanding officer of some 8,000 Human-Variant soldiers— plus four additional Earthlings.