A Warrior's Sacrifice

by Ross Winkler

  "Sir," she said.

  Corwin switched from their private com channel to the Void's. "We're moving again."

  They ran back to the western border, hooked north two kilometers, and then returned to the east, scanning and marking and tracking everything they found. The solitude, complete desolation of landscape, and constant danger wore on the four Maharatha. They snipped at one another, and long hours passed between even the briefest communications beyond what their mission required. Out here with just the four of them, it seemed like civilization had dissolved, and all that remained were the rocks and snow.

  As sunlight sprang up from the east, the Maharatha climbed the ridge that would become their campsite for the next several hours. Corwin assigned the picket order, and his people accepted it without a word. They found what comfortable positions they could and fell asleep.

  Corwin had taken a prone position to look out through several fallen trees. He regretted this decision now as the position cramped his neck and shoulders. He could move, but with the sunlight full upon their position, it would require him to do it at a snail's pace, and that would be more trouble than it was worth. Not that it would really matter; everything was quiet in the valley below. Silent.

  So much silence.

  The silence ate them up. Even Corwin, who enjoyed solitude, began to feel it like a weight pressing on his chest until it became difficult to breathe. He wanted to get out of his suit. He wanted a shower, too, and to eat real food and drink something other than his stale sweat recycled into water, and to use a toilet like a Human, not just soil himself like an infant.

  He frowned again as his eyes scanned the countryside down below. Infants. The word triggered memories he'd rather have left hidden. Corwin squinted his eyes to block out the blood, but it only got worse. The blood of the child he'd gashed filled up the space behind his eyes until he couldn't think straight. Through sheer force of will, Corwin beat the memory down, pushed it back to where it belonged behind his wall.

  That's been happening a lot lately, Corwin thought as his vision cleared. Too often. These long turns at watch left him open to memories better left forgotten. They crept up behind him in dreams or rode through on triggered words or random thoughts — and they seemed to be getting worse. So far they weren't a problem, just an annoyance, really.

  He focused himself on the distant horizon and watched a small rabbit emerge from its den and scavenge. He counted the rocks in his field of view. The focus of the task settled his mind, and he slipped into a meditative state where he could just lie there and observe and forget about everything else.

  As Corwin's turn at watch ended, he spent the last fifteen minutes rolling himself over onto his back for a more relaxed sleeping position. When his alarm beeped, he awakened Hadil, closed his eyes, and slipped away.

  Kavin's control was breaking. It had killed one of Its guards today, the idiot! — consuming five times Its allotted ration. Kavin had been left with little recourse but to slit Its throat and leave the body to the cold and animals. Now they were out food and a warm body for the watch and the hunt.

  They headed northward through the trees, making for the northern edge of the boreal forest where the snow never melted and nothing larger than grass and moss could grow in the few short months that this land called spring and summer.

  This area was still under Choxen control, and it housed the last surviving base from Its defeated Principality. Kavin longed to enter that base, to remove Its armor and eat Its fill of protein and drink clothxlotic until It fell into a stupor. At one time, Kavin could have done such a thing. Now, however, the Base Commander here would kill Kavin on sight.

  Kavin had forsaken everything in Its quest to serve the Creators — a quest that now seemed foolish. It had abandoned Its duties and run as the Republic and IGA closed in. Kavin was no longer a Princip, It was now an interloper, a being no better than the Quislings that It despised so much.

  Kavin led the way through the sensor nets. They passed close to the base, so close that Kavin and Its guards could feel the throbbing of the power generators beneath their feet. Kavin knew this area well, for It had helped install the defenses.

  Kavin felt the rising urge to fight, and Its guards felt the same. They had penetrated close, slipped past the base's guards and electronic defenses. Kavin turned away and led the small band of outcast Choxen northward, away from the encroaching Republic tide and towards the border into the last remaining Principality in Normerica.

  As they reached a place of relative safety, Kavin removed the com from Its pouch. Still no word. Sudden anger threatened to force Its hand closed and crush the tech, to kill the lie that It held in Its hand. Kavin forced it away. It would hear from the Creators soon. It had to.

  Hiding in the scraggy woods, the Maharatha looked northward. The jagged band of trees would be their last refuge, since out on the snow-blown plain, even the browns and tans of stone and earth had been covered in a white ocean of frozen crystals.

  Corwin turned from the bleak snowscape. They would be there soon enough; one more sweep eastward, then they'd turn north and be out in the nothingness. That was how Corwin felt now too. Blank. The endless hours alone, the constant stress, and the cold that seeped in despite the steady seventy degrees inside the suit, had eaten away at his resolve, his focus. Even his anger had lost its fiery edge, replaced instead by a dull, throbbing chill.

  It was in his head, that coldness — that he knew for certain — but he still couldn't shake it or the feelings that it brought. Out here where emptiness and ice grew, there was nothing to distract Corwin from his memories. They seemed to be on a loop: the part he had played in his family's deaths; the destruction of the Quisling caravan; the torture; the Diviner; Phae. They played through his mind, washing out the whiteness of the landscape and replacing it with red. Replacing any of the warmth that Corwin felt with cold.

  The other Maharatha had retreated into their own minds as well. They almost never spoke to one another, and when they did, it was terse.

  Corwin just wanted it to all be over. Complete the mission, fail the mission, die. Whatever.

  The last of the sunlight extinguished itself behind the horizon, and the four hidden Maharatha rose up, invisible, and continued on their trek.

  The relic had Changed. Kavin rolled it around Its gauntleted hands, observing it with eyes unhindered by the helmet that Xe and the other Choxen wore to protect against frostbite and cold. It glowed, somehow, from somewhere, and yet the glow had no place in physicality; it was sensed instead of seen, though perhaps the Creators had the eyes with which to see.

  Kavin knew what this meant: a Crisis drew near. It had read about these moments when many disparate strands came together. In these situations, depending on the timing of intervention, It could create more Schism in the Universe. It was also aware that in other hands, one could weave those strands into a greater act of Accession.

  Kavin would not, could not, let that happen.

  But Kavin was running out of options. It could feel the Republic closing in like razors on the back of Its neck. If It died, the relic would be taken and Xe killed, and the Creators would not receive what was rightfully theirs.

  A gentle vibration in Kavin's pocked caused Its heart to leap, Its breath to draw inward with a hiss. Rolling the relic into Its left hand, Kavin pulled forth the long-dormant communicator. A face, hideous, tusked, appeared in the small com screen.

  "My Creator," Kavin said, voice barely a whisper.

  "It is I, come to collect the relic."

  "I had begun to doubt…"

  "Never doubt the Siloth."

  "I apologize, Creator," Kavin said, bowing at the com.

  "Send me your location."

  Kavin did so without words. These data transmitted instantly, the Siloth responding with an erratic chomping of Its teeth — a sign of annoyance.

  "You are too near the enemy's lands. I will meet you in six hours at these coordinates."

  "Thank you
, Creator. I have several loyal Choxen with me. Will they be able to ascend with us?"

  "No. There is room for only one. I will contact you when I am close." The screen went dark.

  Kavin stood, body and sexual organs erect and wet from the hormonal rush of impending victory. The time had come. Xe would become a god among Choxen. But first It had to get to the extraction point, across almost 200 hundred kilometers of open wilderness. It was far, but Its suit would grant Kavin the speed It needed.

  Kavin returned to camp, kicking Its underlings awake. "Up! Up, you discarded younglings! We're moving, now!"

  Stuffing Its pack with only the bare essentials, Kavin flung it onto Its back and began running, heedless of Its conspicuousness or the guards It left behind.

  Midday. The time when the world should have been warm and bright. Corwin felt none of those things.

  Half his watch had passed, his Voidmates asleep under snowdrifts that had accumulated in the cold early-morning hours. Corwin cleared a space to see through and began once again to count the number of snowflakes that fell before him.

  Something caught his attention. Movement far off in the distance.

  Corwin zoomed in using his helmet's camera. It was a long line of soldiers, Choxen by the color and cut of their armor, and they ran, fast, to the north-northeast. Raising his rifle, Corwin watched them run, eyes jumping from the last in line up to the next, then the next.

  This is entertaining, Corwin's slow mind thought, a welcome distraction from the snow and white and the rocks and the incessant thoughts that pounded his consciousness for attention.

  Corwin's eyes reached the leader of the troupe. He sucked in a breath through barred teeth, a growl escaping. The dams that held back the emotions he'd tried to drown broke with a simultaneous thunder that inundated all his senses. The walls that had held everything in worked, and worked well as long as there was a mind there to keep them in place. That mind was gone now. Corwin saw red. He smelled Phae's burned flesh; felt the Quisling infant's blood dripping down his arms and hands; tasted bile and sickening hatred.

  In that instant, Corwin forgot about everything — his mission, the Void, even his loneliness — as pure rage and animal ferocity wiped his mind clear of everything that made Corwin who he was.

  He leapt to his feet, snow exploding into the air, and threw himself into an all-out sprint.

  An inhuman snarl was the only warning that his sleeping Void had of his departure.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Choxen had an eighty-kilometer lead on Corwin, and they too had armor that boosted their running speed. At first it was impossible for Corwin to make any headway on the prey which he pursued; after the first hour he'd gotten no closer than when he began.

  As the chase dragged on, Corwin's mind began to clear, and as the fog that had clouded his judgment lifted, his heart sank to settle in the pit of his stomach. Corwin had abandoned his post. Worse, he'd left his Voidmates there in the field, deserted them, abandoned them as they slept and perhaps sentenced them to death.

  That was only part of the betrayal, too, a small part. In a moment of self-reflection that only comes about when someone has stepped too far out of bounds, Corwin realized that he had finally and without thought cast himself from the only people in this entire universe that cared about him. He thought he was alone before — wickt! Now, now he was truly alone, a single man who had forsaken himself, trapped in the blank tundra between two factions that would kill him.

  With a sad laugh, he pushed on ahead. He would make his betrayal mean something — even if it was only the whetting taste of revenge.

  They ran, the prey unaware, the hunter calm, listening to the cadence of his breathing, his footfalls.

  Leaping over a snow drift, Corwin felt the thrill of fear as an armored figure appeared on the landscape below. Time seemed to slow, and the Maharatha hung in the air as though suspended on wires. He had time to wonder if maybe they'd detected him, and yet, why hadn't Corwin detected this ambushing soldier in turn?

  Corwin landed, rolled, spun as he came to his feet, rifle snapped into firing position. A body in blue armor lay half buried at the base of the drift. Blood, now frozen, lay in a sunken pool, jagged tendrils reaching outward like red fingers.

  The Choxen had killed one of their own. He left the body where it lay and continued the chase.

  Kavin and Its four remaining guards spread out at the landing zone. It had managed to kill the others on ones and twos, telling these four that there was only room for them, that It had selected them to accompany Xe into the stars with the Creators. Kavin would kill them when the Siloth ship landed.

  Kavin felt the full effect of his species' hormonal rush, the thrill of the kills, the expectation of victory all combined into an urge that It wished to fulfill. Pushing the need down, Kavin scanned Its eyes back across the clearing and the hidden guards. In the growing darkness and whirling white, it was difficult to see anything at all, and the scant sunlight that still forced its way down to Earth obscured his helmet's infrared sensors.

  If someone were to attack, now would be the time…

  It might have been instinct that caused Kavin to dive sideways, or perhaps It saw the slight heat shimmer moving through the falling snow — either way, that movement saved the Princip's life as several high-powered rounds tore through the earth and sent debris splattering into the air. Even still, one of the rounds ricocheted and penetrated Its faceplate and raked across Its face. It was a glancing blow that knocked the Princip unconscious.

  "Wickt," Corwin said as the blue-clad figure lunged out of danger. Choxen rose up in the snowy plain, and Corwin was forced to deal with them instead of the one he hungered for.

  Corwin turned, sweeping his rifle in a long horizontal arc as he tipped himself over onto the ground. A few lucky hits tore the stomach out from one armored Choxen.

  On the ground now, Corwin crawled and fired, rolled sideways and fired again, advancing by centimeters on another enemy position as bullets flew blindly overhead. Reaching to his chest, Corwin pulled loose a grenade, thumbed the trigger, and tossed it into the vicinity of a Choxen.

  Plasma erupted in a gush of green-blue, melting the rocks to slag, vaporizing flesh and the standing and falling snow. For a moment, nothing existed in that space, the snow hesitant to fill the gap as residual heat shimmered and danced upward.

  Using the heat shimmer as cover, Corwin jumped to his feet, firing and advancing on another of the Choxen. Rifle rounds tore into Corwin's side and arm, a few rounds striking his rifle to send it careening out of his grip and into the snow, now a useless hunk of twisted metal. To those observing, it seemed as though a rifle appeared out of thin air as it passed outside the sneak suit's holographic aura.

  Corwin, cursing, suit screaming of integrity breach, lunged forward into the temporary cover provided by a mound of snow and ice packed four meters high and twice that across. Gritting his teeth through pain, he drew his pistol with his left hand, sword with his right. The prick of a needle pushed the throb of broken ribs and torn flesh into the background.

  In a crouched position, Corwin waited. The gun's effective range was limited, so he'd somehow need to get closer to the remaining Choxen.

  Corwin flattened himself to the ground as rifle rounds sent ice pelting into the side of his helmet. The Choxen had their helmets attuned now. They could see him behind his pile of ice as clearly as if he were naked. With a grunt and a ripping, grating noise in his side, Corwin gathered his legs, prepped his suit's musculature, and jumped.

  The jump was bad. Spasms of pain caused Corwin to jerk, sending his airborne body into a slow, forward flip and spiral. He landed with bone-jarring impact flat on his back, ribs cracking, mind rebelling as he fought the panic associated with a diaphragm too stunned to pull air into his lungs.

  Half-awake, Corwin's instinct and training replaced conscious action. With a groan and a twist he turned, left elbow pressed into his side to provide some amount of pressure t
o his injuries. He fired, not wholly sure why or at what.

  By jumping, Corwin had traded places with the assailants who had rushed his previous frozen hiding place. They came back to him singly now, and Corwin fired, three of the five rounds striking his target: hip, stomach, faceplate; sending It spiraling back and away to tumble in the snow.

  Corwin flung himself in a near front flip, twisting his body around to face the other soldier that was just now rounding out of cover. Corwin unloaded the clip, his hand locked on target by the suit's muscles.

  Snow chunks flew upward as Corwin and the Choxen fired. Half a dozen rounds raked across Corwin's legs, but his armor held. The Choxen wasn't as lucky. One of Corwin's high-powered pistol rounds, seemingly guided by an unseen hand, struck the Choxen at the base of the throat where the armor was softest. The round ricocheted upward inside the helmet, bashing, cutting, shredding the soldier inside. It crumpled to a heap, momentum carrying It a few feet farther before stopping.

  Corwin lay back, relaxing at last as the drugs swept in and nanites flooded his body to set to work knitting bone and flesh. He would die out here, he knew that. Already, cold crept inward from his open wound — hypothermia, maybe. Blood loss, absolutely. That was fine. He wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore: no more loneliness, no more hate.

  Only darkness.

  A strong west wind pushed the cloud cover away, and with it the snow. The night was black, with no moon in sight, and a billion pinpricks of light twinkled overhead. A figure in bulky armor staggered to Its feet. Blood still leaked from where a bullet had slashed Its face, oozing in time with Its heartbeat.

  It couldn't see. Its right eye was swollen shut and blood-filled, the left covered by a cracked visor that displayed only spider webs. Its hands scrabbled to Its side, exhaled in relief to find the pack still attached, the orb and transmitter both intact.