Warrior Chronicles 1: Warrior's Scar Read online

  “In my time the phrase was “raising too many eyebrows,” Cort said.

  “Why would it be…” Dar was unable to finish the question as Kay walked out of the room with Dr. Wills holding her arm.

  She looked at Cort and touched his face. “May I see all of the scar?” As Cort took off his tunic she said, “You have so many. But this one…” She ran her finger down the scar, moving opposite the direction her daughter had done months before. “This one is hope.”

  “What do you mean, Mother?”

  “You have to see it, right? He brought us the wolves. He brought me back too. Maybe I have been waiting for him. Maybe he can bring us more hope.” Kay said. No one had to ask what she meant now.

  “Mother…” Dar touched Clare’s hand, quieting her. She realized he was right. “Mother, would you like to meet the wolf? His name is Sköll.”

  --

  “My Gods! I’ve never tasted anything like it.” Clare had eaten almost a pound of fried bacon. Everyone else has left the ‘pound mark’ behind long ago.

  “I told you. It’s not just the meat and the fat though. It’s how you smoke it. No lab will ever imitate that.” The morning after Kay arrived, Cort fried ten pounds of bacon and left two pounds of it raw for Sköll. Fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, and French toast rounded out the breakfast.

  “I will never doubt you about food again, I swear.” Wills said. The crumbs and stains on his tunic belied his thinness.

  Dar said, “How am I going to afford this every day for the rest of my life?”

  Kay laughed at her father’s question. Both he and Clare felt their eyes fill with water. It was the first time Kay had laughed in nearly a decade. Just twelve hours in the presence of the family legend and she was engaging the world around her again. Clare hoped it would last. Sköll stayed close to Kay most of the time, only leaving her side when she was resting. After breakfast, Kay was given a tour of the great warehouse full of history by Dr. Wills. Sköll went with them, of course.

  Cort turned to the others, suddenly terse. “Last night one or all three of you could have been killed. Solely because you didn’t communicate. I don’t do surprises. Next time I will stun you, if only to reinforce the lesson. And not the kind of stun you know. I mean five hundred thousand volts of electrical terror that will cause you to shit yourselves. Don’t doubt me.” He stood and began walking around the perimeter of the facility. They were still sitting at the table eating bacon when he finished his first lap. At that point he was running.

  Summer

  “I don’t expect you all to agree with me. It’s been on my mind for a while though. I can’t stay here. I would never be left alone. Nor would Sköll. That means I would have to kill too many people. And sooner or later I would be killed. It would also spell doom for all of you. You know that.” Cort looked around the table.

  “Furthermore, I have someplace I can go. Someplace I need to go. So, me leaving is not up for discussion. What I want is for you to help me make it happen. Dar and Wills said there is an unoccupied area on the other side of the planet. It was developed as a bug-out site. A place to go if the world went to hell. It’s been abandoned and can be acquired by the trust. Dar and Kay have already started the process. Kay has nothing here, so she wants to go with me. I’m going to allow it. Sköll would get real tired of me anyway now that he knows the feel of a real pack.”

  Clare said, “Why can I not come too? And Grandfather? I mean really, only Dr. Wills really wants to stay here.”

  “Dar and I talked about that. He cannot go. And he doesn’t really want to leave. He knows his life is here. I need you to stay too. At least until this site is emptied. There have to be two of you here to control the trust. Once the site is vacated and sold off, and the trust is reformed, if you still want to join us you can. But until then your place is here.” Cort turned to Wills. “About the sale of property here. All weapons are to be destroyed or they go with me. None of my time’s weapons or armament are sold off. Understand?”

  “Of course. I could not agree more. Even without them, there will be enough money to send you all the supplies and gear you could possibly need for decades to come. I do not know what kind of assets your family trust will have once the acquisition of the new site is completed, but proceeds from this site will certainly be able to support all of us, regardless of location, for years to come.”

  “Do you still want to make the trip to, uh, Washunga?” Dar asked.

  “That trip isn’t optional. If the device is still there, it’s still dangerous. So we have to try. And taking it with me might just be a perfect solution. I still want to see the cabin too.”

  “What device? What is washunga?” Wills asked. Kay and Clare were also confused.

  Not even Dar knew what Cort hoped to find, but Cort could see that he and Dar were on the same page about the secret. “It’s best none of you know. At least not yet, Doctor.”

  “Does anyone have anything else to say about it?” Cort looked around the table. No one spoke. He would miss Dar. The man had become his best friend after Sköll. He knew that to Wills, no matter how much he had won the man’s trust, the site mattered more. Not for the money, Wills would be here without the promise of one dime. But because he was an academic and always would be. No man would ever be more important to him than mankind’s history. Clare was something else. Cort couldn’t resolve his feelings toward her. She is who I might have been if I had first been given a test tube instead of a weapon. That was it. They were alike. Two peas in a pod. Kay sat next to him, with Sköll in between. The two had been inseparable since she came to the bunker. Sköll seemed to sense that she needed him. Cort had no doubt that Sköll’s loyalty belonged to him, but Sköll’s heart belonged to Kay. No, he could not have left her here if he wanted to. Sköll loved the broken woman too much. And with the wolf by her side, she was less so.

  “Then it’s settled. Once the preparations are complete, Kay, Sköll and I are moving to Mars.”

  Eight

  California

  One month later, a medium size flight landed on a large slab of ground. The surface wasn’t something Cort had ever seen before, but he knew it was tempered concrete. Similar to what he had known in his time, but infused with carbon nanotube fibers and fired like a ceramic mug, the T-crete was almost as hard as diamond and much less brittle. The substance had virtually replaced steel as a building material. It was very dark in the shadow of the mountains, and Clare was waiting near the pad.

  Cort stepped off the flight wearing a FALCON suit, carrying only one of the Multiple Ammunition Tactical guns. The MAT had become his weapon of choice. “Is the compound clear?” he asked. Sköll jumped from the flight and sniffed the ground. He looked at Cort anxiously and whined. When Cort nodded, Sköll disappeared into the waning darkness. It was just before dawn, while the shadows they were standing in left Cort almost invisible in the passively cloaked suit, the mountain ridge to the east had a glowing knife’s edge of brightness below a lightening sky. To the northwest, only an ominous storm front could be seen in the sky, the tops of its massive gray clouds rimmed in burnt orange from the approaching day.

  “Yes, There are normally only three servants, and I sent them all on a cruise. A long cruise. I told them Grandfather and I thought they needed a break now that Mother was at a facility. They could not pack fast enough. We have a month here. Oh, there is a massive storm front moving in from the Pacific. It is going to park pretty much directly over us this afternoon and dump around thirty centimeters of rain on us over the next four days. It will be miserable and wet, but ideal for you to work with the HAWC suit.”

  Cort got his bearings and turned back toward Clare. Dar and Kay were now at her side. “Unload what you can. I’ll be at the cabin. When I get back, I’ll start working with the HAWC. Just leave it on the flight. I’ll move it into the barn when I get back.” Then he too disappeared in the direction of the cabin as Sköll had done moments before. Wearing the FALCON suit, he was completely h
idden in seconds.

  Early in the twenty-first century, Cort had been in a hotel room one morning. The TV was on in the background as he studied a target. A recording artist with a new album was performing at the end of a morning news show. Only half listening, Cort had misheard the lyrics of one of her songs. He thought the singer had crooned, “I came back to find I was gone.” That misquote is what Cort felt when he walked into the cabin. Outside and inside it was the same. But he was no longer there. If I’m not here, then where am I? Will I be on Mars? Everything I’ve done. Everywhere I’ve been. It’s gone. Why can’t I find peace? He touched the faded photograph of Angela and little Diane. Next to it was one of Amber and little Cortland. He looked to be about five in the picture. Amber knew I would find a way back here. Maybe I shouldn’t have left. Sköll was by his side again. Even he seemed to know this wasn’t home anymore. Their den was elsewhere.

  Cort closed the door and pulled a small ring that was over its frame. It set a chemical reaction in motion around the top of the cabin’s walls. Glycerin began spilling into several dozen small cavities throughout the structure. Cavities that were partially filled with potassium permanganate. Sköll turned back to the hissing sound he heard in the cabin and let out a low growl. Moments later the crackle of flames could be heard as well. Then the dim early morning sky was suddenly bright as the cabin became an inferno. Cort could see the reflection of the flames in the two picture frames he carried, but he never looked back. By the time the storm arrived that afternoon, the cabin was just smoldering ashes.

  --

  Once the storm had settled in over the compound, Cort and the others went out to the large barn. He walked around the lake before returning to the main house. Inside the barn were several flights, as well as equipment used on the property. The size of a jet hanger, there was plenty of extra space, and in the middle of that space was the HAWC suit. Sköll stood in front of it as Cort climbed in through a hatch in its ‘butt’. To the others, the suit looked like a giant troll staring down at the wolf, as if contemplating how to cook and eat it. Clare captured the moment in a picture.

  After closing the hatch, Cort lowered the cockpit couch into place and sat down. The Atlas Interface in Cort’s neck was actually two different interfaces that used the same harness. Each of leads that attached to Cort’s spinal nerves had two contacts. The shorter of two, while shorter by less than a micron, only touched the surface of the nerve. These leads allowed the control units of the FALCON and CONDOR suits to sense nerve signals and mimic them with the suits’ nanotubes. The longer set of leads actually short circuited the nerves when activated, giving their signals over wholly to the HAWC suit. Once Cort used the HUD to activate the suit, his arms and legs would go limp. In combat, that meant they could be flailing around inside the suit and cause injury or a complete disconnect.

  To avoid this, once the user was in the couch, with arms and legs in their respective recesses, he would activate the control system with a thumb trigger. In turn, the suit would power up, restraints would lock the user’s body in place and the couch would conform to his or her shape. Only then could he activate the interface with either eye movement or voice. At that point only the eyes, other cranial nerves, and autonomic systems continued to function normally. That feeling of paralysis had taken some time to get used to. When in the cavern, Cort sometimes took several minutes to adjust to the feeling. And broke quite a few things. Now it was better, but still not second nature. That was why Cort wanted this time in the suit. He wanted to run and play in it the way he had with the other two. Now he had the time and room to do so.

  “Hey, y’all! Watch this!” he laughed through the suit’s speakers.

  Clare rolled her eyes. “Oh, gods!”

  First he rolled down onto the T-crete, startling Sköll. When he started doing push-ups in the ten-meter tall suit, Kay laughed. Then Sköll jumped up on his back and started barking. Clare jumped on too, followed by the others. Kay took Clare’s hand and smiled. “Your father was not this tall, but he could do a push-up with me on his back.” Clare was glad Kay was going with Cort. She hadn’t seen her mother actually happy since she was a teenager. Losing her husband to a flight accident and then her son to the false charges had caused something inside Kay to die. Cort and Sköll had healed her.

  After his impromptu passengers got off his back, Cort stood up and walked to the door. “I’ll be back in a while,” then he broke into a ground-shaking run.

  Dar chuckled as he pointed at the coffin-sized dents in the ground. “How are we going to explain those to the staff?”

  Cort ran to within two hundred meters of the compound’s fence. He didn’t want to go further and risk being seen by someone outside. He walked through the lake, pulled a tree out of the ground, and even drop-kicked a few boulders. Finally, he went to a large hill south of where the cabin had stood that morning. It was tall and wide, and the perfect place to test his weaponry.

  First up was an oversized sidearm. Pulling it from the holster, Cort waited for lightning from the storm to fire the weapon so the thunder would mask the noise. He had four rounds available to him, all of which could be manufactured by his onboard fabrication kit. The first was a standard ballistic round. The second was a charged round similar to those fired by the MAT. The third amounted to an explosive tank shell. The fourth was incendiary. Even with the raging storm, the tree he fired this round into burned for some time. The sidearm pleased Cort immensely. But what he really wanted to try was the long gun attached to his back.

  After replacing the sidearm in its holster, Cort activated the mounted weapon system. Controlled by the HUD, a two-meter long railgun emerged from the left side of the suit’s back. It rose up the plane of the torso, then tilted forward and tracked according to Cort’s eye movement. He picked a large granite outcrop that was nearly a mile distant. The gun fired with barely a sound, but a moment later the outcrop was gone. The railgun was light, but the slugs it fired were deadly. In default mode, the one kilogram nanotube slugs it fired were incredible, as Cort had just witnessed. There were two other firing modes for the weapon though. While Cort couldn’t test them here, he had seen videos in the training material that impressed him. Accelerated-mode charged the slugs on a molecular level, causing them to heat up before firing. This caused the slug to expand and separate on impact, giving the effect of an explosive round. Fractional-mode was in a different class altogether. The railgun extended to six meters and overcharged its firing system. This accomplished two things: Once the slug left the containment effect of the railgun’s coils behind, it was instantly converted to plasma. And with the rails being longer, the gun was able to accelerate the slug considerably more. To a fractional measurement of the speed of light. When one of these slugs hit a target, the target ceased to exist. The firing rates for each mode decreased as the energy consumed increased, but Cort was very happy, nonetheless.

  When he returned to the barn, everyone was inside the house. They had watched him walk back up to the compound and when he didn’t return inside the house immediately, Clare went out to see if he was having trouble with the suit. She walked into the barn to find him in coveralls looking over the armor from the outside. “Hey there. What are you working on?”

  “Just cleaning it up. It wouldn’t do to find out a rock jammed somewhere when I was in a bind. What’s everyone else doing?”

  “Mom and Sköll are taking naps. Grandfather is working on the first supply ship for you. He does not want it to get there before you do, in case you run into a problem at the site. But he wants it to be in orbit so you can call it down as soon as you need to. He has already got the first three launches planned.” she hesitated a moment while Cort wiped his hands. “Listen, I wanted to tell you, well, thank you. Mom has been sad for so long. You gave her back to me. And I am glad she is going with you. I think you know she meant it when she said that you give her hope.”

  He didn’t respond at first. After slipping off the coveralls, he smiled at her. �
��Hope is something we all need, I think.”

  She stepped forward and put her arms around his waist to hug him. “I am going to miss you though.” She could smell him. It was an almost animal scent. Without thinking she stood up on her toes and kissed him. He kissed her back.

  They stepped apart when they heard Dar clear his throat. “Are things really not complicated enough for you two?” he made eye contact with Cort, but there was no judgement in his face. Clare felt her face burning as her grandfather told Cort that Dr. Wills wanted to speak with him as soon as possible. Then Dar left the two of them in the hanger.

  “That was awkward.” Neither of them knew who had said it first. But both wondered if the other meant the kiss, or it being seen by Dar.

  --

  “The sensors have been going crazy. It is not just cats. They indicate something metallic is flying over at low altitude. Three times in that last hour.”

  “Fuck.” Cort put his hand over the microphone. “Dar, can you fly in this? Wills, I’m putting you on speaker.”