Warrior Chronicles 5: Warrior's Curse (25 page)

The rest of the dinner went smoothly. Cort wanted to invite Ceram to join them, but Kim refused, saying Clem wasn’t ready for the giant insects yet. Cort watched the younger man play dominoes with Dalek, which played right into Kim’s plan. Cort wasn’t able to dislike anyone who doted on his son.

--

It was two days before Cort attacked the underground city. Quinn Faulks used the time to evacuate the area nearly a hundred kilometers around its outline, and armorers attached to the mission spent the time modifying Cort’s HAWC. While the drive was already installed, Kim’s plan for protecting her husband involved most of the interior of the suit being gutted to make enough room for Cort to wear a CONDOR inside its big brother.

Dalek hugged Cort’s leg as Kim kissed her husband. When she obviously slipped her tongue into his mouth and rubbed the groin of his FALCON, Kim looked Quinn directly in the eye.

Dalek said, “Ewwwww!” as Quinn turned away, losing some unspoken contest that no one else in the launch bay knew had played out.

Once everything was ready, Cort pulled the mask of his FALCON down, donned the CONDOR, and waited for the armorers to place him inside the hollow torso of the HAWC. After Cort was secured, George took control of the suit. Everyone cleared the bay and its atmosphere was captured before a shuttle door opened just enough for the HAWC to jump clear of the ship. Thrusters moved the
Kalashnikov
away from the suit and George formed a warp bubble that projected into the center of the underground city.

The bubble gathered particles and pushed them ahead of the direct path George had created. On
the planet surface, the atmosphere ignited, the ground exploded, and a hole was punched into the world that had been abducting humans. A millisecond later the HAWC jumped to the leading edge of the bubble.

Cort and his people watched the jump through the HAWC’s sensors. When it landed in the heart of the city, the shock wave created by the jump was halfway to the city’s outer edge. The destruction it left behind was catastrophic. Buildings were still falling as the wave inverted and began to roll back toward Cort from every direction.

George tried to say, “Brace yourself, Father,” but the words were cut off.

All the feeds from Cort’s suit disappeared. Kim was thankful that Dalek was off with Clem and the wolves again. “Do you have anything yet, George?”

“No, Mother. It will be a few more seconds before the secondary system can boot.”

A minute later, Kim asked again.

“There is nothing, Mother. I’m going to use a probe to scan the area.”

The seven minutes it took the probe to send its telemetry was the longest seven minutes of Kim’s life. She thought back to when she received a vid from Cort during the Cuplan war. He was saying goodbye. The only person she had to comfort her was Heroc, a queen and spy from the empire Cort was fighting. Kim realized that she had taken Cort’s chance to say goodbye away from him this time. With the kiss that was as much for Quinn Faulks’ benefit as Cort’s, she never even told him she loved him. That was when she realized that she wanted to kill Quinn for her betrayal.

“There is one human alive in the city. It has to be Father. He is not moving, but he seems to be okay otherwise. He appears to be under a large amount of debris.”

There were only thirty-two Marines left, but there were thousands of Jaifans. Of them, nearly a thousand were old brood and immune to the influence of the Gryll. Quinn started to order her men and women into shuttles. Kim walked up to her and said, “Stop!”

Everyone stopped. Quinn might have been the official leader of the Marines, but no one had any doubt about Kim’s authority. Kim moved to face H’uum. “Bring my husband back to me. If you have to break this universe, H’uum, bring him back to me.”

H’uum kneeled and clicked, “I will, Pledge Mother.”

H’uum began clicking orders and Jaifans swarmed into the bay. They came to a stop when Quinn, who stood in front of the stunned and motionless Marines, said, “Ma’am, this is my job. It’s how your husband, General Addison, planned it. We have to follow his plan.”

Kim’s voice was almost a whisper but in the silent bay, to the hypersensitive antennae of the Jaifans and the auditory sensors of the CONDORs, it sounded like the roar of angry god. “To borrow a phrase from Cort’s time, you just hit the nail on the head, Quinn. He’s my husband. When he was incapacitated, you climbed onto
my
husband and raped him. You did it over and over, knowing that he had no control over his own mind or body. You are no better than the Gryll. The only reason you are still breathing is because I know we are leaving you in this godsforsaken universe when we go. But from this moment until the moment we leave you here, you are confined to your quarters.”

Quinn stood her ground, arguing,  “You don’t have that authority, Mrs. Addison.”

Kim’s voice was normal now. Almost conversational. “Oh but I do, you whore. Because George is going to take control of your suit and walk you there. Then he’s going to lock you in, because he too, is mine. He’s my son. And finally, all these people who call me
Pledge Mother
do so because they have sworn allegiance to my family, and if you cross me, they will kill you without hesitation.” Kim didn’t break eye contact with the woman, but she smiled. “Won’t they H’uum?”

H’uum’s mandibles flexed into a menacing grin that made the flare of his sharpened, blade-like wings seem all the more threatening. He clicked, “Pledge Mother, it will be a disappointment to us all if she does not disobey you.”

“George, get her out of my sight.”

Over Quinn’s protests, her CONDOR’s weapons fell to the ground and it began walking across the shuttle bay.

Behind her, a human lieutenant Kim didn’t know stepped forward.

“Mrs. Addison, what can we do to help?”

--

Well that didn’t happen the way it was supposed to,
Cort thought. The power pack on his CONDOR was dead, but that was only the beginning. He was in total darkness. And from what he saw just before the power went out, he was going to be here for a while. The shock wave from the jump brought most of the city to the ground. Cort’s vid flashed from the blackness of space to the center of an expanding ring of destruction. As it passed through buildings, they first shuddered then began to slowly collapse. Cort remembered seeing a large number of Gryll in the streets, but as the shock wave moved through them, their crushed and mangled bodies collapsed as well.

Then the wave reversed.

George knew it would. That was why the CONDOR was inside the HAWC. There was no way for the HAWC to survive the blast, but they had hoped that the CONDOR would. Whether it was the makeup of the rock around the city, some trick of harmonics caused by the shape of its walls, or some other incalculable factor, the CONDOR did not survive. In fact, it seemed to be nearly as damaged as its larger counterpart was. Cort had watched as bodies and debris were thrown at him before the towering building collapsed, severing the power feeds to the armor and burying him in the suits under thousands of tons of rubble.

Cort tilted his head forward, causing a cord attached to the back of head to pull taught. He tucked his head into his chin and the cord pulled four tabs from the modified power pack on his back. Chemicals mixed and began to generate electricity.
Now we wait.

He was thankful that only his sight was taken in the darkness. Having spent time in sensory-deprivation tanks in the 20th and 21st centuries, Cort held on to the sensation of every touch. He started at his toes, feeling the fabric around them. Then it was his calves. His thighs, groin, and torso followed, Cort trying to identify every single sensation his body felt. It was a simple trick, but one that he hoped would keep him alert until his suit had enough power to activate. He didn’t expect to escape the debris that confined him, but at least with power he could signal George he was alive and find out how long he would have to wait for rescue.

--

Above the crater that led to the city, the
Kalashnikov
skimmed the atmosphere of the planet. A thousand of old brood Jaifans fell from the ship and descended into the dust-filled hole like locusts moving across the ravaged landscape.

Blade-like wings sliced and eviscerated anything that moved. While the contest went on for hours, that was only because the Jaifans had to work their way through the rubble. In every building, and seemingly under every rock, new enemies were found alive. Hundreds of Jaifans died, but thousands of Gryll did. In the end, there seemed to be nothing left in the small city except Jaifans and the man they had sworn to protect. Every alien heartbeat the Jaifans could detect with their hypersensitive antennae was stilled. They began to search for Cort.

--

Cort’s power finally reached the level to allow him to transmit to George. He waited another minute and activated his comm. “George, can you hear me?”

“Yes Father. It is good to hear your voice. Your vital signs are coming through. You appear to be okay. Mother has been worried.”

“Show her I am fine. What’s going on around me?”

“Your shock wave destroyed the city. There were considerable acoustic properties that I was not able to allow for in the calculations I used when designing your warp bubble.”

“What does all that mean?”

“You are buried in rubble, Father. The Jaifans are above you clearing the area of enemy personnel.”

“A battle?”

“Not much of a battle, Father. Most of the enemy are disoriented. There are very few areas of resistance. I believe the Jaifans will have the area secure soon. Then they will dig you out.”

“What is the status of your heavier armor, Father?”

“The HAWC is completely destroyed. The CONDOR has a lot of damage, but I think it would be functional if it had power. Unfortunately I don’t have a way to transfer power from the FALCON until I am out of this mess. We need to consider that for future engagements. I know I couldn’t run it long on a FALCON pack, but I’d bet I could at least dig my way out.”

“It would depend on how much… Excuse me, Father. Mother has asked to be connected to you.”

“Okay.” When Kim was on the line, she immediately sent a vid feed that was projected to Cort’s HUD. “Hey, beautiful.”

“I love you baby. All I’ve been thinking about since we lost contact with you was that I didn’t say that before you got sealed up in the HAWC. I forgot to. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, baby. I mean it.” Kim’s eyes were red and swollen.

“You told me with that kiss, Kim. I’ve never doubted it.”

Kim smiled and Cort watched as she wiped away fresh tears. “George says you’re okay. Has claustrophobia set in yet?”

“No, but it’s damned quiet. Especially before I got power. How long was it?”

“Just a few hours. Cort, I need to tell you something. Just listen, okay?”

Cort’s brow furrowed in his mask. The motion made the skin around his new eye tingle. “What is it, Kim?”

“I messed up, baby,” Kim confessed. “I know you don’t like to air our dirty laundry, and I just aired it to the entire fleet.”

“The stuff with Clem?”

“I wish it were that simple. I really do, Cort. Please just listen, okay?”

It was as though a current shot through Cort’s brain. He felt the same sensations of alertness and dread and anger he had felt when Dalek was kidnapped and when the spies from the Cuplan Empire were found on Government World. He had felt the charge when he found out about the secret base the Atlantic Alliance had placed on Mars during the war of independence, and even when he knew he was going to have to kill the first humans he met in this time. He had felt it a thousand times in his life. Every time he felt it, his emotions turned off and he became Ares, War Incarnate. And now his own wife caused the sensation.

“I’m listening.”