A Warrior's Sacrifice

by Ross Winkler

  "We launch in just under two hours. Await my signals, stay with your Moons, obey your orders." She spoke with clicks and chirps, but Corwin understood.

  The brevity of her speech made him chuckle. Some pep talk, he thought.

  Corwin became aware of a shifting within his mind, like he was one among a group of stones being shuffled and distributed to players in a game. He landed with the twenty soldiers inside his own pod, comprising two Moons, equally split.

  His Void had been divided, Kai and Phae in one Moon, Corwin and Chahal in the other. They would not remain their own unit, working with but separate from the IGA soldiers. Corwin didn't like it. He felt the snake of fear coil in his belly, not for himself, but for Phae and Kai and Chahal. Arguing or requesting what he wanted from his C.O. wouldn't have done any good. Within the Republic, Corwin had rank and clout, but in the eyes of the IGA, he was only an "Element Commander" — the leader of a mere four soldiers.

  While he had no say in this arrangement, the voice in the back of his mind spoke up, reminding him that in fact this situation was his fault. If he had been on-target, if he'd killed that Choxen with the first shot, Yerama-gar wouldn't have died and they wouldn't be here. Should any of his Voidmates die during this mission, it would be his fault.

  He felt that wall slide into place, sturdy, impregnable, between himself and his emotions. Calm. He was calm now, if hollow.

  Phae must have dyzued Corwin's sudden withdrawal. She reached over in the stiff, clunky way that Power Armor engendered and patted him on the shoulder. The gesture was out of affection, love maybe, but there was so much armor between them — emotional, physical — that her touch never reached him. Corwin locked himself down, shifting his support back onto himself, a tall, strong, free-standing bastion that would not, could not crumble.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Kavin paced the confines of Its private room. Reaching into the small pack It carried on Its hip, the edges now worn and frayed, It pulled forth the com and checked for messages. Still none. It returned the com to the pack. Kavin resumed pacing.

  It had been too long, too long! The Creator had said It would come, said It would be here to collect Kavin and the relic. There was nothing! No contact, no message, and no interstellar vehicle descending from the heavens.

  Meanwhile, the tension inside the base had grown, and not the exciting, prebattle kind. It was that soul-sucking, waiting, inaction kind of tension, and it was starting to get out of control. Its soldiers wanted blood, the Grunts were hungry, and Kavin didn't have time for any of it. It debated letting Brixaal run loose, but that would also be a problem: one failed raid or attack could bring the Republic down on this small base, and Kavin's plans would be laid to waste.

  The days after the successful raid on the Order of Accession had tested Kavin's resolve, but that resolve had crumbled in time with Its lands, and It could read the signs in Itself along with the others in the base. Something drastic would need to happen, or Kavin would face full-on mutiny.

  Worse yet, Kavin had begun to doubt. It began as just a tickle in the back of Its mind after the second day of waiting. The Creators never went against their word; they were too omnipotent for that, but…

  So Kavin had changed Its plans, though It still harbored some hope for redemption and honor from the Siloth.

  As the last of Brixaal's officers filed into the briefing room, Kavin began Its plan for a counterattack in the area — a last stand for Its crumbling Principality.

  Kavin hadn't gotten more than a dozen words into Its briefing when the sirens began. A force approached from overland. Passive sensors had also picked up several orbiting ships converging above their base's position.

  Kavin dismissed the officers with a wave of Its hand and the barked command to "Prepare the defenses." Kavin had Its own preparations to make.

  "Prepare for launch."

  It was the only warning they received before the pod lurched forward.

  Stomachs leapt into throats — except Corwin's. He was calm, steady. Ready. Unseen gears conveyed them into the drop tube. The cursor in his mind-screen flashed to green. Securing bolts detached, and they free-fell for a few seconds until the pod landed in the tube, arresting their movement with a skull-splitting stop.

  Energy charged and gathered in the tube. Silence.

  All at once, g-forces slammed the soldiers into their seats, and acceleration tore and battered at their frail, fleshy forms. They streaked across soundless open space, the pale-blue moon rising in the distance, bright Earth a ball of blue and green and puffy cottonball clouds.

  The pod hit atmosphere. Despite the soldiers' stiff armor, their bodies jerked and twisted. Flame enveloped the pod as speed and friction rubbed the air molecules into an orange and red fury. The entire pod vibrated and shook until its passengers vibrated the same.

  The ballistic transport punched through. The mad jostling ceased, replaced by that gut-wrenching feeling of free-fall. Again. The pod gained speed, and it shook again and again from the impact of anti-aircraft ordinance. Several direct hits knocked the pod out of balance, and it purled in all directions.

  White encroached upon the edges of Corwin's vision, and he fought even as others within the pod went limp. He clawed at consciousness, took hold and dug in, braced and pulled himself out of the soft nothingness that sought to envelope him.

  The pod's small stabilizing wings opened. Thrusters flared. The pod's wild spiral slowed until it righted, then nudged itself sideways until it was back on course. From the sky, bright beams of light lanced out, striking the earth, boring holes from the surface down into the enemy base hidden below. The pods aligned with these holes.

  After a final few course corrections, the stabilizing wings snapped shut. The pod plummeted into the laser-drilled passageways, careening from wall to wall until finally coming to land with bone and sense-jarring impact in the base below.

  Weapons appeared from the pod's sides, the computer tracking enemy movement. The shallow corridors rang with the deafening sound of high-powered guns, of ricocheting bullets, and the wails of the dying. The guns wound down and retracted. The pod's roof slid off to one side and disgorged its shaken passengers.

  Sirens screamed into the labyrinthine complex, the hallways cutting at right angles, coming together and splitting apart so as to confuse would-be invaders and provide defensible choke-points. Rifles blared from both defender and attacker. Grenades exploded, splitting plasteel, armor, and flesh. Rockets flashed and detonated, spraying the tight space with haze and debris.

  Interposed between the sounds of battle were those eerie moments when all sound ceased; when the dead and the dying made their presence known. The moment was brief — a heartbeat or two — then forgotten as a rifle cracks and the killing began anew.

  Icons appeared in Corwin's mind as his squad leader assigned waypoints. Corwin leapt up and out of the pod, his feet alighting on the cracked and splintered plasteel floor. The armor was a part of him now, as comfortable and familiar as his arms and legs. Chahal followed, covering him from behind.

  His target was a nearby door and the room behind. Corwin put his shoulder down and rammed through, his full 360-degree vision identifying targets before he was even clear of the tumbling door. They had been waiting for someone to enter, but they hadn't expected the door to explode inward and tear a piece of the wall away with it. They hesitated, and in doing so, they died.

  Corwin covered the left side of the room, targeting and tracking enemy soldiers with robot-like precision. A squeeze of the trigger sent clustered, high-penetrating rounds into and through the armored enemy. Chahal was no less deadly as she cleared the right side of the room. He and Chahal had painted a red line across the wall.

  They both swept the room with their sensors, searching for life forms as well as the Śeṣanāga. "Target clear," Corwin said on his way out. "Negative on the Śeṣanāga." He led the way towards the next target, dimly aware and trying hard to ignore Phae's and Kai's icons on his ment
al map.

  Corwin and Chahal cleared their next room without incident, then the next with only minor damage to their suits, but the surprise of the attack had worn off, and allied soldiers began to join the enemy in death.

  Their mission was to work their way to the base's security control station and open the doors for the remainder of the assault force. It proved difficult as surprise gave way to stiff and savage resistance. Their initial momentum ground to a halt at one of the complex's many bottlenecks.

  The commander was awful. She threw wave after wave of Variants down the corridor, straight into the teeth of the turrets and guarding soldiers.

  Corwin and his people would die here. He called out to his Void, "I'm done with this. We're going to make a back door."

  He abandoned his position and headed for a side hallway, his Void following behind. They found a room, already cleared but stuffed with crates and boxes and barrels of all sizes.

  "Kai, on the door." Corwin pushed a stack of crates to one side. "The rest of you help me clear a space."

  They traced a two meter square doorway onto the bare plasteel wall with detonation wire and then placed some of the high temp burn putty onto the wire.

  "Get ready to move."

  With a mental command, Corwin ignited the putty. Tracing the square, the searing flame cut the wall like a welder's torch.

  He didn't wait for the energy of the fire to exhaust itself. "Let's go!" he shouted as he kicked the now free-standing section of wall. It tumbled and slid, lashing out in all directions to catch the enemy with steaming tendrils of molten plasteel. Corwin charged through the new doorway, rifle up, spewing death even as the Choxen tried to turn to face this new threat.

  The four Maharatha fell upon the enemy, one hand slashing with Droth sword, the other firing. A rifle burst and a kick sent an opponent flying from before Corwin; a quick turn at his waist decapitated another. Their identical clone faces snarled in defeat.

  Corwin dodged to the side using his rifle and armored forearm to deflect a falling enemy sword. He kept turning and cut the legs out from under It; a downward stomp finished his squirming prey. With his 360-degree vision, Corwin saw behind him and rounded, blasting a Choxen prepared to attack Phae from behind.

  He ducked and stepped backward, spinning as a Grunt's clawed hand sailed through the space where his head had been.

  "GRUNTS!" Kai bellowed and threw himself forward. The power armor almost doubled his size and tripled his weight. He was a careening boulder with the grace and skill of a dancer. All this he brought to bear on the onrushing Grunts. He met their savage cries with his own, hurling himself into their midst, ready to lay down his life for three of maybe the eight people in the entire Republic that he cared about — and who cared for him in return.

  The force and surprise of the Maharathas' rear assault provided enough of a distraction for the IGA Variants to chop their way through the front barrier.

  Phae fired her jump jets, gouts of flame burning a Choxen that had come too close, and she leapt into the space Kai had created, meeting the Grunts face to screaming face. Chahal closed in onto Kai's right, Corwin onto the far left. Together, with the Variants assaulting from behind, they fell upon the enemy.

  Kai kicked the last Grunt off the end of his sword. The battle had been short, ferocious, and took every last ounce from him. Finding no more enemies, he dropped to one knee, panting. He'd borne the brunt of the fight, killing almost twice as many Grunts as the Maharatha beside him. He wouldn't be down for long; his engineered body recovered faster than normal, and his suit supplied chemical stimulants.

  The other Variants ran past on their way to carry out further missions and secure other waypoints. They nodded, one group of born-and-bred warriors acknowledging the skill of another.

  Their C.O. jogged up and grabbed Corwin, spinning him, driving forward until Corwin's armored neck was pressed between her forearm and the wall. "Don't you ever break formation again!" she shouted through their com link. "I am in charge. I. Me. Understand?"

  "Your bad command got more people killed than necessary. I saved this mission." The words flew out of his mouth before he could stop them.

  She pressed until his armor groaned from the strain. "You do as I say, or I send you out alone." She let go and jogged after the other Variants. "Get moving to your next objective!"

  "Ungrateful she-wickt," Phae said as she helped pull Kai to his feet.

  "Can't say I blame her too much, though any good commander would have taken credit for the idea as her own, filed it away as a useful tactic and moved on," Corwin said, pausing at a fork in the hallways. The Void split here, Kai and Phae down one branch, Corwin and Chahal the other.

  "See you on the other side."

  They battled forward, raging through the halls until, almost two hours after touchdown, the invaders found the security bunker. By this time, they'd lost over half of their initial force of 8,000 soldiers. They would lose more now — perhaps all — as they threw themselves in assault after useless assault on the defended bunker.

  The IGA, it seemed, didn't train their soldiers to think, just to throw lives at a problem until they or the enemy broke. Corwin frowned. Here was one place where the concepts of dreng and jendr would come in handy.

  "They're going to get us killed," Chahal said. Her voice was grim, almost resigned to her fate.

  "Do something, Corwin!" Phae shouted as yet another wave of Variants ran headlong into high velocity penetrators and died.

  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 op
en 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.