by Ross Winkler
Now that he stood at the threshold, he had doubts: in himself, in Phae's family. How would he answer the question as to how she died? Had he done everything he could to protect her?
No. He wasn't prepared for this. The wound was too raw, his own guilt too great to hide.
He turned to leave. The door opened. A half dozen people — Wei soldiers all — of various ages and stages of inebriation paused at the doorway. They looked anxious to leave, but to push past a Maharatha would cause the family to fall towards jendr.
The one in the front of the line, due to proximity more than anything else, bowed and addressed Corwin.
"Sir," he said. "You give us dreng with your presence."
"Uh, yes," Corwin said. His mind was mired, stuck halfway between flight and surprise.
"How may we help you, sir?"
"Uh, I'm here to speak to Phae's family."
Someone farther back in line snorted, and tension filled the small hallway.
Corwin frowned.
A voice from a side room made those at the door turn. "You leave a Maharatha at the doorstep?" An old woman hobbled from the nearest doorway, skin spotted and drooping, her body hunched and skeletal. "Move aside, you jendr brats! Move aside! Let him through!"
Admonished, the six in the hallway nodded and pressed themselves against one wall so Corwin could squeeze through. Corwin offered his arm to the woman. She looked surprised but took it, standing a bit taller than she had in years. Without looking behind her, the woman waved, and the six in the hallway scampered out through the door.
"What brings a Maharatha to a lowly Wei family, sir?"
"I need to speak to someone regarding one of your family members. About Phae."
Air rattled in the woman's chest. "Ah, Phae. Come with me." She led the way farther into the building.
Corwin had heard of these places, but it was the first time that he'd had an opportunity to visit one. When possible, the Oniwabanshu would house family members together. New families occupied a single room in an apartment building that contained 10,000 other, single families. Over time, as the family grew, they might take up entire floors, or in the case of Phae's family, occupy an entire building.
The denizens of such a place were in constant flux. In a soldiering family, there were always deaths, and campaigns might take entire sections of the house across the world for months at a time. The oldest of families might even have several such complexes — one on each of the continents or in each of the major cities across the planet.
Phae's family, Corwin knew from their quiet conversations in the dark, was limited to just this one building on the Normerican continent, though a few of her family members had been transplanted to Soumerica when that campaign began, and they had carved out a cluster of rooms for themselves in one of the newly fabricated apartment complexes.
As a single family spread out through a building, the rooms and spaces that were so rigid in a multifamily unit began to transform to fit the needs of the occupants. Instead of holding to the standard design — single- or two-bedded rooms arranged around a central common room, kitchen and restroom — Family Lieng had turned a few on this first floor into meeting rooms, the remainder set aside to house the elders of the family.
The woman showed Corwin to a chair and then hobbled to the elevator set into the wall at the end of the hallway.
Corwin could feel eyes on him. He glanced around, noting the flurry of turned heads as those of Phae's family who lounged nearby or arrived to gawk were caught in the act.
From the elevator, Phae's mother approached, a frown drawn across her face.
Seeing the woman again, remembering Phae's last interaction with her, Corwin realized the mistake he'd made in coming here.
Corwin rose to meet her. She saluted. Corwin saluted back.
"Void Commander Shura, how may I help you, sir?"
Corwin swallowed. "I have news regarding Phae."
She grunted. "What do I care of someone who forsook Family Lieng?"
Her words stabbed like a dagger at his heart. "She's dead."
"That's fine." The woman's voice didn't waver, nor did her gaze.
Corwin met her eyes, threw her cold stare back. "How can you say that?"
He hadn't raised his voice, but the power layered within the words forced the woman back a step. She recovered and straightened her uniform. "She used her standing as Maharatha to sever all her ties to Family Lieng. She isn't my concern."
"She never really was." The words sprung unbidden from Corwin's lips. "You threw her into a crèche, forgot about her. Now I tell you she's dead, and you don't care."
The woman's face darkened. "She left us, sir. Don't expect me to be grateful that you invade our home with the death tale of a stranger. If she had been a part of this family, we would have celebrated her death. Now, we don't care."
Corwin stood rigid, jaw and fists clenching in time.
"Is there anything else, sir?"
"No," Corwin said through gritted teeth.
"Then let me escort you to the door. You have given us dreng with your presence." She gestured back the way he had come.
Corwin put his back to her, neck muscles bunched and aching, and walked out the door without stopping.
He wandered the streets of New Detroit, aimless and embittered. He longed for the solitude of his cave, but that refuge had been destroyed, as had Phae. The city yet celebrated, but this time the denizens gave Corwin a wide berth as he stalked among them, clothed in anger.
He had been a fool to think that Phae's family would care about her death. She had left Family Lieng, become dreng-less to get away from them. Yet even so, Corwin couldn't comprehend a family being anything but caring, even for a wayward child.
Like so many times before, he had been wrong. He was always wrong when it came to the Republic; it did not care about its people, and it never would. It would never care about Corwin or those Quisling children he'd thrust into its gaping maw. He had done them a disservice by his compassion — his idiot compassion. He should have killed them.
As Corwin walked, he added layers to the wall that held his emotions at bay. His lips found their accustomed place, his eyebrows knotted in their usual way. His wall grew thicker. He found calm after a time, after he had boxed his emotions in and layered brick and steel and unbending iron in between. Corwin felt nothing, cared for nothing.
He was fine.
As to the Republic and the IGA, he would serve them, kill for them until his time came, and then he would welcome death.
Kai and Chahal noticed the change in Corwin as soon as he entered the room. He no longer exuded the miasma of warring emotions that so colored a person's Sahktriya and attitude after trauma. It was not a good thing.
Chahal and Kai exchanged a glance.
It was just the three of them now in their new quarters — an upgrade from their previous housing arrangements. Instead of each occupying a single bunk in a room of a hundred people, they now had four bunks, adjustable lights, and enough room for a table and chair at the far end. They were moving up in the world, their new housing denoting their increase in respective ranks — from rookies to veterans.
"You're both sober, I hope," Corwin said, flipping his com closed. "Briefing for another mission at 2200." Wickting Republic. Sorry your squad mate died, here's a new one. Now get back out there.
They passed the time without words, Corwin resting his back on the dull plasteel wall, alone on his bunk, Kai and Chahal sitting beside one another, leaning forward with elbows on knees.
At 2058, Phae's replacement entered. She saluted, right fist clasped over her heart, and bowed. "Hadil Akpalio reporting for duty!" she said as she returned to a stiff standing position.
Kai nodded in return. Chahal waved her fingers.
Corwin gestured to the bunk across from him. "Sit." He didn't bother looking, waiting instead for her to pass into his field of view. Her svelte waist and long torso gave way to slim shoulders, so unlike Phae's severe
triangular shape. Her neck was long and slender, her hair wiry, curly, and short. She was tall also a few centimeters taller than Corwin, and her skin was almost as dark as Corwin's own. She was, if anything, the exact opposite of Phae. She looked young, her face unmarred except by slight wrinkles at the corner of her eyes and mouth. Her eyes were wide, bright, and clear — untroubled by the trauma that haunted a veteran.
Corwin didn't like her. "Do you know who I am?" The bunk above shadowed his face and upper torso, obscuring her view. He didn't sit forward.
Hadil glanced at the other two. "You are Void Commander Shura, of Family Shura, Maharatha Caste."
"Do you know what I am?"
A smile touched the corners of Hadil's lips. "You were a Quisling; but now you serve the Republic — some say with skill beyond what the Republic teaches."
Corwin didn't speak for a moment, unsure of what to say next. He should welcome her to the Void, start the process that would integrate her into what the Void was supposed to be. He couldn't do that just yet.
"Does it bother you to be saddled with a Quisling, a Variant, and an Exilist?"
"Not much." That tentative smile again. "The way I see it, you must be good — better than good — to come as far as you have."
"If I was really that good, you wouldn't be here." Corwin's voice was colder than before.
Hadil's smile faded. She didn't respond.
"I expect you to follow my orders, always."
"Yes, sir."
Corwin slid forward and stood, straightening his shirt and pants. "Talk amongst yourselves. I'll be back in time to accompany you to the briefing." He walked from the room. As the door closed, it pushed a puff of air into his face, the air carrying with it a smell that brought Phae's face back into his mind. It sent him reeling.
For a moment he was frozen in place as all those little things about a person flooded back: the feel of her skin, the tickle of her long hair on his nose. With effort, Corwin pushed the memories away and stuffed them back into the hole where they had escaped, shook himself, and walked away.
Hadil sat across from the two remaining Maharatha, the giant Variant and the slim Exilist, and clasped her hands over her lap.
Chahal observed the new girl. Like Corwin, she noticed the differences but without the same sexual-emotional connection. As Phae's replacement, Hadil represented the Ka Aspect of the four differing-yet-overlapping personalities that interwove to create the Void, both as a spiritual whole and as an elite fighting unit. Yet despite Phae's and Hadil's shared Aspects, they couldn't be more dissimilar. Phae's anger created an explosiveness that she'd had a hard time containing; Hadil seemed calm and reserved in comparison, thoughtful even.
Though Chahal saw something of Phae behind the new girl's eyes. There was a hunger there, the need to prove herself worthy, and maybe a little bit of tempered anger.
"I'm not familiar with the Akpalio Family name. What castes do you occupy?" Chahal asked.
"We are an old family with most of our people in the upper tiers of the Maharatha and Tercio."
"Why aren't you angry about being saddled with the likes of us?" Kai asked, voice loud in the small space.
Hadil's face reddened despite her dark skin, and for a moment her eyes flashed. "It is justified punishment for my low scores in the Academy."
Kai chuckled. "Your punishment is to be put with us, and receiving a substandard replacement is our punishment for being who we are."
Hadil's eyes shown brilliant with anger for a moment, neck muscles tensing, but she said nothing and forced it back down.
Chahal smiled to herself. Not that different from Phae after all.
"How did the last Ka Aspect die? Was Commander Shura as much to blame as he thinks?" Hadil asked after a few moments.
"No," Chahal said, "a simple calamity of war. If anything, Phae's death can be laid at the IGA's feet."
Hadil nodded, rubbing her chin. "I assume also that the Commander and the, and Phae were lovers?"
"More than that, from what I overheard," Kai said.
"Am I to fill that role too?"
Sexual relations between all members of a Void was a Republic norm, with new members, men and women, inserting themselves into the complex emotional-sexual framework as well as supplying their combat skills. The way she asked the question indicated she wasn't thrilled about the task, but she would do what her punishment and the nature of the job dictated.
"Absolutely not," Chahal said, pointing. "It will tear him apart right now."
Hadil was equal amounts surprised and relieved. "Commander Shura is … an interesting man," she said at last.
Kai snorted a laugh, a low roll of thunder. "He is plagued by self-doubt and guilt. Do what he says and keep yourself alive."
A knock on the door, and Corwin stuck his head in. "Let's go."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Their next mission was a simple thing, what amounted to the assault and destruction of a forward Choxen outpost 150 kilometers west-northwest of the western most outskirts of New Detroit. It took a day to gather the intel and another few hours to requisition the soldiers they needed. The second day, at the head of some hundred Tercio, Corwin led the attack.
The Choxen never stood a chance. After the Republic troops had overrun the Choxen defenses, a hack of their computers revealed another half dozen unknown outposts in the area. They were the forward feelers from the substantial Choxen base centered in old Grand Rapids, which had been lost fifty years before during the Choxen counterattack.
For another week Corwin led his soldiers from outpost to outpost, each one buried underground, hidden deep in forests, or within the wreckage of decaying, preinvasion cities and towns.
At the beginning, resistance was minimal — the Choxen had little warning or time to prepare — but as the days wore on, the enemy entrenched themselves. Corwin's losses mounted — all Tercio — but men and women nonetheless, with names that Corwin didn't try to learn and faces he tried to forget.
Corwin was dreng with his soldiers, never using them as cannon-fodder but never caring for their lives either. It was their job, after all, and he let their deaths roll off him like the summer rain slid off his armor.
Corwin and his Void received a full day of leave after they returned to New Detroit — a reward for a job well done. The next day, they were briefed and sent out again, and when they'd completed that mission, they were sent out yet again. Days flowed into weeks, and when they were fortunate enough to be in the wilderness for their missions, as opposed to the rusted carcasses of ancient cities, they saw the leaves change, the grasses die, the plants wither. They watched winter arrive and with it the cold and accompanying ice and snow that marked the midwest and east of Normerica.
Far to the north, where the snow-covered land gave way to barren ice and rock and frost-tipped waves, Corwin pulled the trigger. A gush of red skewed across the white, melting and steaming as the Choxen died. He fired again and again from his ambush position under and between large gray-brown rocks.
Those that remained in the patrol, the cold, weary, frostbitten clones with their same faces but differing scars, fired back at random. It was useless; by the time they'd realized their compatriot's death, the other three Maharatha, also hidden about the landscape, had opened fire and killed those that remained.
It's better that they died like this, Corwin thought as he advanced to check the steaming bodies. They'd been pushed out from their stronghold in the far northeast corner of Normerica, where that great axe head of peninsula jutted out into the Atlantic Ocean and formed the eastern edge of Hudson Bay.
Corwin kicked at the bodies, firing his pistol into the face of one whose eyes still twitched despite holes in chest and torso. These were the last of the refugees that had fled their base's destruction. The four Maharatha had hounded them for the last month, their team of four whittling down a party of 500 strong. And now they were dead. One more "Mission Complete" in Corwin's file.
He was tired, and desp
ite his suit's homeostatic temperature control, chilled. It was in his bones, the cold, a dull throb that couldn't be abated or warmed away. And it only seemed to grow worse here as he stared out across the dead bodies of his enemies at the ice-laden water's edge. Three small rocky islands lay out ahead, and as he looked, a sudden shift of the atmosphere brought a shadow looming in the distance beyond them like a big brother standing guard beyond the three: Baffin Island.
On each of these small plots of land that grew only ice and flightless birds, and the larger one behind, enemies dwelled. Soon they would be the last of the enemy-controlled lands on Earth. A ghost's memory of a smile tried to lift the corners of Corwin's mouth. It was uncomfortable.
Corwin turned away. Those islands weren't his concern at the moment. They would wait for another soldier to lead his or her people into death.
With a thought, Corwin called his CO at the Oniwabanshu.
"Yes?" his CO answered.
"Mission complete."
"Fine. Get back, get food and rest, then report to me at 0800 hours two days from now."
"Sir." Corwin waved his rifle to his hiding Void. They came up out of the snow, scrambled out from under boulders, and joined Corwin for the ninety kilometer jog to the nearest Republic encampment.
It wasn't cold in New Detroit, no, in fact, it was hot. Corwin stepped from the barracks and began sweating under his arms and behind his knees. It was the ion shield's fault; it kept all the heat from the people and industry trapped inside its protective bubble. Instead of the winter that raged around the rest of the northern hemisphere, it was a constant seventy-five and humid. Things became more temperate the farther from the city center one went, and occasionally a cold wind would blow into the city's outskirts, snaking down streets and alleys, a frigid blast from nature's ventilation system.
It might even smell better, Corwin thought. It always smelled when he came back from a mission: Human stink. He wrinkled his nose and his frown deepened. They'd returned to New Detroit and their quarters just thirteen hours before, and after a much-needed shower, hit their bunks for some equally needed sleep.