Warrior Chronicles 2: Warrior's Blood (2 page)

“Uh... Airlock activation in sector two. Outer door is sealing now. Did we have someone outside?”

“No. This isn’t right. Get me video of that airlock.” When the video came online, the inner lock was unspooling. “Holy Gods. What is that? Get security to that area! Then send tech teams to every one of the breaches. I’m calling the boss. Ah, this is going to be bad. Lock down all the airlocks except for those the techs are using. And monitor them. And keep a vid on that thing! Don’t let it out of your sight! Aw, hell.”

--

Kim Point was jogging the outer perimeter when she turned a corner and saw a nearly two-and-a-half meters tall, black figure walking through the airlock. It held a long weapon that didn’t look like a disruptor, and while the face was completely obscured by its helmet, Point sensed that whatever or whoever was inside the suit was not here to say hello.

--

Cort activated his HUD map of the colony and broke into a jog down the corridors, turning left and right as the head-up display directed him. There were two guards at the main door to the detention center. Raising a disruptor pistol with his left hand, he fired, but he was prepared when they were not affected. He holstered the disruptor and lifted the MAT from his chest. “Sorry, boys.” he said, “This goes one of two ways. You tell me where Rand Gaines is, or I kill you. Your choice.”

The closest man raised what Cort recognized as a high power carbine-type disruptor. It was capable of immobilizing or neutralizing a target, even if they wearing a protective tunic such as the guards were. The weapon was completely ineffective against Cort and his CONDOR suit. Thumbing his MAT to the standard setting, Cort’s first round removed the man’s head. He turned to the other guard. “What’s it going to be?”

The second man was nearly in shock. Cort needed to bring him back. He wrapped the fingers of his powered armor gauntlet around the man’s neck and lifted him off the ground. “You now have two new options. I can hold you here until you run out of oxygen, or you can tell me what I want to know.”

The man was still looking at his partner’s body when he choked out, “He’s not here. He’s in the max security area.”

“Where is that? Now,” Cort demanded as he put the man down.

The man pointed and said, “Inner section. Corridor five.” He looked up at Cort and said, “Who are you?”

“A soul banished from Hell.” Cort turned and ran as the colony map on his HUD updated.

--

“He’s human. Or at least he speaks our language. He killed one of the guards at Detention One. Decapitated him,” Chief Rhodes told Steve Taps. The Governor was not pleased to be roused at four a.m., but his displeasure only grew when he found out the outer walls had suffered no less than eight separate breaches, and there was a madman running around in the colony.

“Where’s he headed? And how did he decapitate a guard with a disruptor?” Taps asked.

“It’s not a disruptor. It’s some sort of high-powered projectile weapon. He’s headed toward you, sir.”

“Bloody hell. A projectile weapon in a colony? How the hell did that get here? Wait… Did you say he’s headed for me? No... He’s here to get Rand. Order a Prowler team to the Max area! No restrictions.”

“Yes, sir.”
No restrictions?

Steve Taps thought about what was happening.
If only I had called the reinforcements in sooner. No, Keen, I most certainly did not overreact, now did I? So Dar, you sent someone to get your grandson. But how did you get that kind of weapon? Has the Addison Trust developed something off the books? Never mind. He won’t get through my Prowler team.

--

Cort got to the corridor where Rand was being held and found it filled with men in body suits that looked similar to his FALCONs. They were all pointing weapons at him and fired at the same time. The combined energy from their Prowlers was absorbed into his CONDOR suit, and from there, it arced to the walls of the corridor, causing lights to flicker and go out. In the near total darkness only Cort could see, thanks to his suit’s sensors. Thumbing a second type of ammunition from the MATs dual round clip, he fired one explosive shot into the man at the center of the group.

--

“Sir, the Prowler team appears to all be dead. No movement whatsoever,” Rhodes said.

Taps felt the icy grip of fear.
Dead? All of them? Oh Gods. What will he do when he sees Rand?

“He’s breached the max cell, Sir. Instructions?...Sir?”

--

Cort activated the CONDORs external lights to give his grandson sight. Neither of them were prepared for what they saw.

Rand was tied naked to a hard bed. Clearly he had been tortured. He was also malnourished, because even with synthetics, he was bruised and one arm appeared broken. “Can you put this on?” Cort asked as he cut the ropes binding Rand. He then laid a pressure suit next to him.

Rand saw the giant suit, and for the first time in months, felt actual hope. “I think so. My arm is bad. I’ll need some help. Who are you?”

“There will be time for that later. For now, just know that your mother sent me.”

“Mom?” Rand struggled into the suit with Cort’s help. “How did you get here? Where is she?”

“Later. Right now, get the suit on. I’ll be back. Don’t leave this room. Understand?”

“Yes.” Rand began putting the boots on one-handed.

Outside in the corridor, power had been restored. Cort looked into a security camera. “Guide me to the Governor or I will kill every man, woman, and child in this colony. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Rhodes said over the speakers in the corridor. “He is in corridor three, two rings inside of your position. I’ll mark the door for you. Please don’t hurt anyone else. Gaines was the Governor’s grudge. Not something the rest of us wanted.”

“Send someone to help Rand suit up. And get him some fortified food. Now. If he is hurt, I will kill you all.” Cort turned a corner and headed for the Governor’s quarters.

--

“I’m going to enjoy this, Governor,” Cort said after he bent the door off its hinges. “I’m going to enjoy this very much.”

Taps was standing in a corner and had wet himself as the door folded backward into the room. He held up a disruptor and fired it. Cort crushed the weapon while it was still in the man’s hands. When he let go, the metal was wrapped around Taps’ fingers, which were smashed and bleeding.
 

“It is unfortunate, but where I come from, we are much more adept at torture than you are. And I am more adept at it than most. After my family died, I withdrew from society. Before coming here, I read a profile that my government had done on me. A psychological profile. It said that, since the death of my family, I have begun to develop an ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’. Do you know what that is, Governor?
”

Taps couldn’t speak. The monster before him was so calm. He felt as if he was being toyed with. He shook his head.

“It means I have little or no conscience when it comes to those I don’t care about. It means I feel no guilt or remorse for my actions. Do you know what that means for you, Governor?” Cort stepped on the man’s foot, crushing the bones in it.

Taps screamed and shook his head again.

“It means I am going to enjoy killing you. It means that every ounce of suffering my grandson has felt since arriving here will be felt tenfold by you in the next hour. Now do you understand?” Taps couldn’t know it, but Cort was smiling grimly inside his suit.

“Your grandson? My Gods. That’s you inside there, Dar? Please Dar, no. I’m sorry. What do you want?” Taps begged.

“I want you to suffer. And I want your family to know how much you suffered. You and yours started this feud on another planet. I will end it. Here or Earth or across the galaxy, there is nowhere your people can hide. But today, I will be content with your suffering.”

Steve Taps screamed for the next half hour. He did not last as long as Cort had hoped he would. People could hear his screams throughout the corridors of the colony. No one raised a hand to help him. Cort stepped on the bodies of the ‘Prowler team’ as he walked back to the cell where he had left Rand. A medico had given him a ‘traumatic injury’ dose of synthetics, and the man looked healthier already. They were replacing his suit when Cort walked in.

He looked up at the monitor inside the cell and said, “Are you still listening?”

“Yes. I am listening. We’ve done as you asked,” Rhodes said.

“Put me on the speakers. I want every person in this colony to hear me,” Cort demanded.

“Okay.” Rhodes pushed several buttons. “You can speak to everyone now.”

“People of Oxia Palus, hear me and hear me well. I am Cortland Addison of the Pack Addison. I have come here to right a wrong done to my family. It needs to end here. It needs to end now. I am truly sorry for the death I have brought to you, but do not doubt for one moment that, if you seek retribution, I will come back here and kill every single one of you. Every man. Every woman. Every child.” Cort paused for his words to take effect.

“I did not want this. I only wanted to rescue my kin from the injustice you allowed your governor to exact up on him. We are leaving now. We are going to the Aeolis site. We want only to be left alone. And we will leave you alone. But if you come to us, you will only find death. We will not be your friends. We will not help you. We don’t want your help. Leave. Us. Alone.”

--

“Are you really Addison?” Rand asked as Cort carried him to the MERV. “Are you really the legend?”

Cort stopped and put him down next to the vehicle. “We have several days of travel ahead of us, so there will be plenty of time to talk. But yes. I am your legend. There is a scar from here to here.” Cort drew a line down the front of his armor and continued, “And my...our wolf Sköll is back at Aeolis with your Mother. Let’s go to our new home.”

Oxia Palus Colony

“You mean to say that after all that, you just let him walk away?” Tom Smith was fuming. His cousin had called him to Mars to add additional security now that the Addisons had taken over one of the other colony sites. Smith brought thirty troops with him from Earth, and after what he saw when he arrived, he immediately asked for ninety more.

“We did
not have much choice in the matter. You’ve seen the vid. And we are leaving him alone, just as he asked.” Dave Keen was now acting Governor, until the emergency election was held.

“You may be, Keen. But we are not. As he said, this is a blood feud that spans the solar system, but my family will end it, not his.”

“Smith, you are making a mistake, and I will not risk the colony for your vendetta. This is not Earth where you can just walk away and start over. If he comes back here and carries out his threat, this colony dies. That is not going to happen. Not on my watch.”

“Your ‘watch’ can end, Keen.” Tom Smith turned and walked out of the room.

“Gods damn it!” Keen turned to Rhodes. “Watch them. I want video on them every minute. Audio when you can. I want to know what they eat, who they mate, and when they purge. Do we have a way to communicate with Aeolis?”

“Not at the moment, except to relay through Earth. Are you going to warn Addison?” Rhodes asked.

“Warn Addison?” Keen laughed. “I tried to warn Smith. His hubris is going to kill all of his people. What message did he try to send by the way?”

“It was encrypted, but my tech said it was a request for more people. I dumped the transmission. So why do you want to talk to Addison if not to warn him?”

“I want him to know we had nothing to do with this.” Keen stared at Rhodes. “And that once they leave this colony, they will not be allowed back in. That however he sees fit to dispose of them is okay with us. I don’t like having a man like him on our planet. But I’m starting to see the need for it. I just hope he isn’t another Taps.”