A Warrior's Sacrifice (33 page)

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.