Warrior Chronicles 5: Warrior's Curse Page 21

  “I’ve lost two Marines and several Jaifans. The site has elevators leading down at least one hundred meters, possibly deeper.”

  “Are these elevators big enough for a HAWC?”

  “One of them is.”

  “What is the status on the rest of the planet?”

  “I have Jaifans and Marine teams clearing out the surface cities. Other species are no longer protecting the Gryll. They seem to realize that we are the favorites now.”

  “Okay, put scouts on all the entrances into the underground city.” Why does an underground city bother me? “Then fall back and continue clearing the surface of Gryll. I don’t have to tell you no prisoners Quinn. They are too dangerous.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s good to have you back sir.”

  “Thank you. Ares out.” I’m missing something. Well two things. Something about Quinn, and something about the planet. What is it? Am I ready to go back into a suit?

  Cort commed George.

  “Yes Father?”

  “George, can the new warp generators be put on a HAWC?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Before we left our universe, you designed a new engine, right?”

  “Yes, Father. The Perlmutter Schmidt Reiss particle drive.”

  “Yes, that. Can it be put on a HAWC?”

  “Father, I am concerned for you. You ordered Doctor Pan and me to change out HAWC power pack and add a PSR cannon system to it. It was done before we entered this universe. Don’t you remember?”

  “No, I don’t remember shit. Send me a sim so I can learn how to use it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “George… you know what was in my reeducation videos. Clearly there are things I am still missing. Find them out and tell me what they are. I also need you separate from your core for a little while. Shield yourself as heavily as possible and scan the underground city that Colonel Faulks found.”

  “It would be safer for me to use autonomous probes, Father.”

  “Do that then. But find out whatever you can without risking yourself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you. Ares out.”

  Cort spent two hours inside the HAWC practicing what he had in mind, then he sent the data to George and had the AI compare his plan to the scans George was taking of the underground city. After that, the plan was modified and Cort ran through the sims again. When he had completed a full day of work, Kim tapped on the outside of the suit. “Hey, baby. You in there?”

  “What if I say no?”

  “I’ll call George and have him lock you out of the suit.”

  The hatch which formed the suit’s butt opened up and Cort flipped out of the ten-meter tall armor. “Hey.”

  “I saw you cleaned the galley out of bacon and coffee.”

  “So?” Cort asked defensively.

  “Baby, don’t push it. Ceram hasn’t cleared you for the HAWC yet.”

  “Don’t push me, Kim. I’m going down there tomorrow to put an end to this.”

  “You’re not ready, Cort.”

  “I’m ready to go home. I don’t like this place.”

  “I know what you mean.” Kim’s eyes were distant, as if she was remembering something Cort couldn’t. “It’s evil here. I’ve never bought into things like that, but this universe is evil.”

  “This universe is what its inhabitants make of it. Nothing more. But it’s time to go home. We have to.”

  “It’s too soon for you to fight. You could order the planet evacuated, then destroy it.”

  “No. George nixed that. It’s part of the planet’s natural defenses. If it goes, the two black holes will destabilize. I don’t understand the physics, but he says if we destroy it, we can’t go home.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to clear out this underground city and turn the planet over to Quinn. She wants to stay here.”

  “Good.” Kim muttered so low that Cort couldn’t quite hear her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I just can’t imagine wanting to stay here. But she has nothing back there does she? Not since her moms died.”

  “I suppose. I think there is something more to it though. She’s running from something. In any case, it gives us a foothold here. I’m meeting with the Jaifan queens today. I’m hoping to leave the planet with the beginning of a colony. When we get back, we can use the tachyon system to send willing colonists here.”

  “The people who come here will live forever from our perspective. Think about it, someone could invest there, then come here, wait a few years, then go back to immeasurable wealth.”

  Cort thought about what Kim said. “That’s a good point. How much more wealthy have we become since you left there?”

  “Who knows? We might have gone broke.”

  “Aren’t we getting updates from the other side?”

  “Yes, but I’ve been a little preoccupied to pay much attention. I told George to let me know if anything important came through.” Kim sighed. “Which brings us back to it being a bad idea for you to go.”

  Cort raised an eyebrow, something he couldn’t have done before suffering the original scar running down his face. “Why?”

  “Ceram said so. And he’s a doctor.”

  “But why?” Cort asked again. “Either I’m okay, or I’m not.”

  “Baby, you know it’s not that simple. You might be more vulnerable to them now.”

  “I have George working on that. Kim. I’m going. We both know that. Help me, so I don’t have to expel energy fighting you over it. Please.”

  Kim’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re bound to kill yourself, aren’t you? What about the people who love you? The ones you are going to leave behind someday? What about me?”

  Cort turned to face Kim. He took both of her hands in his and raised them to his chest. “You know I've always done what I had to do to be able to look at myself in the mirror. In both times, both universes, both of my lives.”

  Kim’s tears began to fall. Cort leaned down and kissed the tears from her cheeks. “I have to do this, baby. You know it as well as I do. It’s who I am. Please help me.”

  Kim looked up at the man she fought the universe to keep. He knew that she wouldn’t love him any less if he didn’t go down into the bowels of the planet below him, but he could see that she understood. She wouldn’t love him any less, but he couldn’t be that man. Anymore than he could not love her.

  Her voice was shaky as she asked, “What do you need from me?”

  “You think outside of the box. Do that now. Protect me from their telepathy bullshit.”

  Kim wiped her tears away, took one of Cort’s hands and led him away from the HAWC. She touched her comm with her other hand. “George, it’s Mom. Send me what you know about the Gryll.”

  After she disconnected from George, she stopped and turned to face her husband. “Now let’s talk about Clem.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “No baby. You know you can’t dismiss him. He may not be family yet, but he is blood. And he’s from another time. He has different values. Think about it… He went from dirt poor to soldier to slave. And now he’s in another universe trying to adapt to things that not even H.G. Wells could imagine in his time.”

  Cort shook his head. “He’s narrow-minded. That doesn’t work now.”

  “So were the Cuplans, Cort. Heroc was. She changed. She loved Dalek, Cort. She changed the galaxy for him. She died for him.”

  Kim reached up to touch Cort’s face. “Clem would too. So he deserves the same chance you gave Heroc.”

  “If he ever calls you a moll again, I’ll crush his throat.”

  “What is a moll, anyway?”

  “Look it up,” Cort replied as he put her hand on his crotch. “In the meantime, how soon can I have your body? I’m horny almost all the time. I can’t explain it, but the more angry I get, the harder I get.”

  Kim’s eyes clouded for just a moment. Then the clouds disa
ppeared and she smiled. “Remember our first time?”

  Cort did. “You had to do all the work.”

  “I’ll do all the work again.”

  --

  Cort left their quarters wearing a simple tunic. As they had dressed, Kim had asked why he wasn’t wearing a FALCON, but he didn’t answer. He just took her hand and led her to the galley.

  Cort sat down across the table from Clem and immediately began, “My wife and son really like you, Clem. I’m trying to, but the reality is that I don’t. I am sorry about choking you, though.”

  Clem reached up and touched the bruised skin around his neck as Cort went on. “I’m trying to accept you. I really am. But I’m not as forgiving as my wife is. If you ever call her a moll again… for that matter if you ever insult anyone I care about again, I’ll hurt you.”

  Kim was too surprised by Cort’s bluntness to think about her words. “So that’s why you aren’t wearing your FALCON. To protect him.”

  Clem asked, “What’s a FALCON?”

  “It’s a flexible combat suit. It enhances Cort’s strength.”

  “Papa’s still strong though,” Dalek said as he walked into the with his escort.

  Cort ignored his family as he continued to look at Clem. “How is your history lesson coming along?”

  “I’m up to your time,” Clem answered as he held up his own flexpad. “I mean before you jumped forward. This thing is neato. I read a short version of the whole thing, now I’m reading it closer. I’m up to where you found your sister in the train station.”

  Cort remembered his sister’s frozen hand sticking out of the rubble in a train station in Denver. “A president died that day. But all I saw was my own loss.”

  “This book thing is nice, but I’d like to hear about my family.”

  Cort relaxed a little. “I can tell you what I know. Great-grandma Mary died when I was little. She taught me how to play dominoes.”

  “Then you must be damned good at them. She was a real trick when it came to throwing bones.” Clem smiled at his memories.

  “Papa’s teaching me too, Clemmer!”

  Clem turned his smile to the boy. “Well then, maybe you and I can play some.”

  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?”

  --
<
br />   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.