A Warrior's Sacrifice

by Ross Winkler

  Chahal recovered first. "Give us the room," she said. After the two had hurried out, Chahal approached Corwin and placed her hand on his knee. "Phae isn't here," she said.

  "No. I smelled her. She was here … I … I..." Corwin's dull eyes moved about the room, searching but not seeing.

  Chahal grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him once, then a second time, harder, each time speaking his name. He didn't respond. She'd seen this before in her crèche training, traumatic experiences overwhelming a person's normally functioning mind. They become trapped in a mental loop, like a computer, for days or years, until something brought them out.

  Looping one arm under Corwin's shoulder and grabbing him around the neck with her other hand, she hauled him off the bunk, his body registering the shift in balance in time to get his legs up under him. Still holding him up, Chahal hit him, twice, once in the gut, then with a full powered open-hand palm straight to the face.

  Blood gushed from his nose and dripped down to mingle with the same from his split lip. That small animal part of his brain kicked in, recognizing pain and danger, and shorted out the loop around which his Human mind rode.

  His eyes focused as he awakened from his nightmare. Surprise gave way to anger, and out of instinct Corwin struck back. Chahal was ready for it, deflecting the blow, and directed Corwin's reeling body up against the bed frame.

  "Get it together!" she hissed into his face as he struggled.

  "Chahal?" Corwin asked as his mind regained its tremulous balance. He shook himself free from the shoulder lock, and Chahal let him go but kept her hands connected to him as he turned to face her.

  "You hit me?"

  "You lost it, Corwin. You were reliving… our time with the IGA."

  "I … yeah. I remember." He brought his hand to his lip, dabbing and tonguing at the blood. It was then that he became aware of Chahal's hands pressed up against his chest. He tried to remove her hands, but she brushed his attempt away.

  Her touch made him uncomfortable. It was an intimate, though not sexual touch, and it was more physical contact than Corwin had had in months. They stared at each other until Corwin couldn't stand the press of her hands on him. He tried again to push her away, and this time Chahal let him.

  Corwin again dabbed at the blood with his fingers. "Thanks."

  "You need to get your mind together. This mission … this is already going to be hard without you slipping back into this state."

  "I'm fine now. It was just a lapse. I'm fine."

  "You aren't." Chahal sighed and rubbed her fingers over her eyebrows. "You know Phae's death wasn't your fault."

  Corwin didn't answer.

  "In your silence, you agree with me. It wasn't your fault."

  "Yes, it was."

  "How? Tell me. How was it your fault?"

  Corwin leaned onto the bed again, eyes focusing back to another time. "It just was. I don't want to talk about this, Chahal."

  Chahal hit him in the face again with an open palm heel. It didn't draw blood, but it sent Corwin stumbling. "Stay in the present. The IGA sent us to take that objective. The Choxen planted the explosives. How is it your fault?"

  Corwin was fading in and out now. "It's my fault. I should have been on target, but I wasn't. If I had, we wouldn't have been in there in the first place."

  Chahal grabbed him by the shoulders again and shook. "LISTEN!" she shouted into his face. "You can look backward and find fault with everything. Just wickting stop. It happened. It wasn't your fault. It just is."

  Corwin was tired of being pushed around. With a twist of his body, he upset Chahal's balance then used his own arm to lock up hers. With his free hand, he pressed her face into the support beam of the bed.

  "You want to talk about finding fault? Here's where it started. I begged my parents to take me along with them to a Choxen negotiation. The leader challenged my parents for me. They fought and won, but we were there too long, and the Republic found us.

  "My entire family died because of me. Get it? And then I missed my shots, and the Diviner died, and the Choxen leader escaped with the Śeṣanāga, and then Phae died." He pressed Chahal's face in harder with each word: "My fault. My fault. My fault."

  Chahal's squinted her eyes closed against the pain. He let her go with a sharp breath and turned away. "Everywhere I go people die. It's … it's easier just not to care."

  "But you do care. Otherwise you wouldn't be acting like this." Chahal rubbed at her elbow to work out the ache. "Why did you miss?"

  "What?" The question surprised him.

  "Why didn't you hit your target? Why did you miss?"

  He'd never asked that question. All that had mattered was that he had missed, and from that mistake … from his mistake, everything else had followed. "I … uh…" He made more noncommittal sounds. He had no answer: he'd missed because he missed.

  "Wickt," Chahal said. "I'm a trained sniper, and I don't, can't, hit 100 percent of my shots. When you pull the trigger, you never know what the enemy will do."

  Corwin shook his head, shrugged.

  "It was chance, Corwin. That's all. Just chance."

  Corwin nodded, sucking at his lip as his eyes danced across memories. He turned and left the room.

  Hadil and Kai stood into attention from where they slouched against the wall. Corwin didn't see them. He wasn't lost this time; his Voidmates could see that. He simply looked backwards and observed old memories and actions from the present.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Kavin stared out into the twilight, Its scarred face twisted in a mask of anger — anger to hide hurt.

  It had been out in the wastes since Brixaal's base fell to the Order of Accession, and he had been waiting for word from the Siloth, waiting for one of the Creators to descend and rescue It from Its now-miserable life; to redeem It even for Its defeat at the hands of the Republic and the IGA.

  Worst of all, Kavin was bored. Back in Its own lands, It would have been planning, plotting against the other Princips and the Base Commanders or penetrating the Republic defenses with Its scouts. But here, all It did was wait — wait and subjugate.

  But even that was getting monotonous. Every day, Kavin would take the most rebellious of Its guards and subjugate It before the others so that they knew Kavin was in charge. There was no more fun in that; now it was just a job. It needed to subjugate the others to keep control for one day longer.

  It might have been fun if there was a chance that It would lose, that Kavin would be subdued and subjugated in turn; to feel the struggle against a stronger opponent; to overcome It — or not. Kavin's frown deepened. These were dangerous thoughts out here in the wilderness, where even the planet itself tried to kill.

  As the weeks dragged on and their food ran low, Kavin had arranged hunting parties. It was a necessity that presented its own challenges, since the farther they roamed from their safe haven, the greater the chances of being discovered, and the higher the risk of Its guards defecting.

  And they had gone far. The Republic had attacked in the wake of the Accession assault and had devoured huge portions of Kavin's Principality. There was almost nothing left, and Kavin had been forced to lead Its small band of soldiers out from Its own lands and into the Principality of the last Choxen Princip — an act that, if they were discovered, would end with torture and death.

  But those were more distant concerns compared with the ache and grumble in their bellies. It pulled the com from Its pack and checked for any missed messages. There were none, again. With a sigh, Kavin turned. It must do Its duty and send a hunting party, but to do that, It must first Subjugate every member of Its guard to ensure their continued loyalty.

  The transport set the four Maharatha down twenty-four kilometers north of the nearest Republic outpost and 160 kilometers west from the border between the Republic and the last remaining Choxen Principality. It was the dead of winter, just a day past New Year's Eve, and recent snowfall had covered the forested land with a layer of muted white.
/>   Their initial trek would take them eastward and down, following the slow, sloping granite land to where it gave way to the frozen marshlands and swamps around the southern bowl of Hudson Bay. From there they would turn north, then west and run a parallel track to the one they'd just laid.

  "All right," Corwin said, sweeping the area with his suit's active sensors, "start up your active camo."

  Mental commands brought the microscopic cameras and holoprojectors that studded their suits to life. The Maharatha shimmered as they disappeared, one piece and limb at a time.

  Standing still, they couldn't see each other with their normal Human eyes. They became visible only as they moved, a slight heat-shimmer across the frozen terrain, which in daylight would give them away as surely as if they were naked.

  "Form up like we planned." Without waiting for a response, Corwin leapt forward into the loping stride that they could sustain indefinitely thanks to the artificial muscles in their sneak suits.

  The others sprang forward to catch up, spreading out so that each suit's passive sensors overlapped by just a few meters. In effect, they were able to maintain contact with each other as well as create an unbroken scanning line just under two kilometers long.

  For now they were still well within Republic territory, and as the first hour fazed into the fourth, their minds wandered from their current tasks, and their conversations turned to home and to family; and in those silent moments between conversations, they thought about food and sunlight and the mission.

  Corwin didn't bother engaging in the banter. The mission before them was all that mattered now, and while they should have been safe, he didn't want to take any chances with a break in concentration. The success of the mission relied on Corwin's ability to think and attend and perceive. He would see the mission done well and would tackle the next mission and the one after that with the same tenacity and focus and hardness of heart that combat required.

  Kilometer after kilometer fell away before them, the line sagging and twisting as the four Maharatha worked their way around and through the dips and turns of the landscape. At points, their scanning line would bunch like an accordion, collapsing towards one another due to aberrations in the landscape before springing apart again. Often two of the Voidmates would run within eyesight of another, occasionally all four would be near. That was how it needed to be, for to split one away from contact with the others was to invite death into their party.

  They were almost two hours into the contested lands — the no man's land of sorts that provided a buffer between the Republic and Choxen territories — before Corwin ordered them to slow down. The border into the Choxen lands would be guarded by sentient and electronic eyes.

  The single line of Maharatha split into two-person teams, and they slowed to a crawl. The pace was painful after running for so long, as each step now had to be deliberate and their balance exact and their paths around obstacles judged and planned for hundreds of steps ahead, all while attending to their sensors and watching for hidden guards, automatic weapon emplacements, and enemy sensors. This was, by comparison, more exhausting than outright running, and the meaningless chatter that had filled their ears and time before was replaced now by sharp breaths, knotted foreheads, and clenched jaws.

  Their suits' computers rendered the invisible enemy sensors as bright swatches of danger, red for motion, blue for electronic, and green for heat, bathing the barren landscape, as seen through their visors in ghostly hues. Most of the sensor trails overlapped, but some areas didn't, and those unprotected areas provided the Maharatha with a winding pathway through. In other areas, their sneak suits' computers, with some gentle nudges and tweaks from their Human operators, applied the appropriate countermeasures to defeat the sensors in which they traveled.

  It took six and a half hours to cross the border. Once through, the Maharatha regrouped into their original straight-line formation and proceeded northward. They were tired now, not from the physical exertion but from the mental, and each of them felt the familiar prick of a needle at one time or another as their suits compensated with injections of stimulants.

  It was safer for them now as the majority of the enemy surveillance was concentrated outward, but they could and would be found if they were stupid or careless.

  "All right. That's it for tonight." Corwin highlighted an outcropping of rocks up ahead. The Maharatha descended, wraith-like, on their target.

  They arranged themselves so that they peeked outward through openings in the outcrop. There was no banter now, each of the four soldiers too tired to make words or coherent thoughts to one another — Corwin least of all.

  "Eight hours rest," he said. "I'll take first watch, and I'll wake the next in two hours." Within minutes, his Voidmates were asleep, guns nestled in the crooks of their arms.

  Corwin waited, silent and scanning. He sipped from his drink straw, just a little. This was an extended op, and there would be no bathroom breaks; he wanted to avoid "feeding" his suit for as long as possible. The suit would break the waste down within an hour, but it was still an unpleasant feeling.

  As Corwin watched, the day dawned gray, the sun hanging low on the horizon, almost blotted out by the dark clouds that seemed to be frozen in place overhead. Snow drifted down, billowing at times, whirling where the wind caught and chased itself into a vortex. It was strange here. There was a different kind of silence this far north. It was as if life and the sounds that went with it simply stopped. The trees became fixtures, nonliving things like the rocks, and even the animals barely stirred from their burrows.

  Today was like that. It was peaceful, a physical representation of Corwin's internal state. Calm. Quiet.

  Frozen.

  His alarm beeped, and he awakened Kai with a nudge from his elbow.

  "Wha-what?" The Variant shook his armored head. "I'm awake, Corwin. Get your hours."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Out ahead, the slow-moving Hudson Bay water lapped at the shoreline, ice frosting the edges. The dense tree cover had tapered out several kilometers back, and frozen marshes and bogs took their place. Trees still clung to a meager existence along the ridges that held their delicate roots out from the water. Rivers, most frozen, some not, twisted through the lower elevations connecting the bogs, and in places where the ever-present wind from the north had worn away the snow, tall, dead grasses poked though. It would have been beautiful here during the summer, though just as deadly.

  Corwin paused on a ridge that separated one icy marsh from another, the almost single line of trees his only protection from complete exposure. In this position his helmet could capture and record the sensor net that marked the border.

  Something up ahead let lose a great snort of electromagnetic discharge, like a beast half awakened during its hibernation. Then it settled, falling back asleep.

  "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 t
he 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."