Warrior Chronicles 5: Warrior's Curse Read online

  When Dalek was gone, Kim said, “Baby I thought that. I didn’t say it.”

  “Let’s go see Ceram. On the way tell me about Quinn. What did she do to you?”

  “It wasn’t me,” Kim said, trying to decide if she should guard her thoughts.

  “Who then?”

  She raped you, baby, Kim thought.

  “She what?” Cort demanded.

  Just listen to me. I don’t even want to say it. Can you really hear me, Cort?

  “Yes, I hear you.”

  By the time they walked into Ceram’s medical bay, Cort knew what had happened. He brooded for over an hour while Ceram ran tests.

  “It appears, Pledge Father, that several structures near the area that was affected by the stroke are somewhat changed. Your biosynthetics are at least partially responsible for your newfound telepathic involvement.”

  “Telepathic involvement?”

  “I do not have a better term. You yourself seem to have developed some telepathic ability while being immune to that of the enemy species.”

  “Well, at least that can’t be bad.”

  “I believe that would be a matter of personal perspective, Pled…”

  “Yeah, yeah. From my perspective it’s good. Are there any potential problems I need to know about? Progression or anything?”

  “I will be taking daily scans. Until I have several scans, I cannot speculate.”

  “Okay, do you have any idea why it didn’t happen until today?” Kim asked.

  “Only speculation.”

  Cort made a frustrated sound. “Then speculate, dammit.”

  “I suspect the initial changes were made by some combination of your synthetics trying to protect your brain, and the residual neural energy of what I am calling telepathic spikes.”

  Cort looked at Kim, then back at Ceram. “We follow you so far. Go on.”

  “When you were exposed to a similar telepathic spike in the underground city, I believe it enabled your own ability.”

  “So by trying to stroke me out again, they primed the pump of something my synthetics had done.”

  “Primed the pump?” Ceram clicked.

  Cort shook his head. “Nevermind. So I’m okay, you just want to monitor me. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  Cort took Kim’s hand and stood to leave. “Thanks, Doc. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  Cort commed George as he left the medical bay. “Bring Quinn to the launch area, and assemble all non-vital personnel there.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  --

  Cort stood in front of fewer than a hundred people. Nearly one third of them were Jaifan. Mostly queens, they were all that was left of the Jaifan contingent in this universe. The rest were a blend of human Marines and ship crew. To the left of the assembled personnel, Kim stood beside Clem. Cort briefly wondered what his younger great-grandfather was going to think about the judgement Cort was about to pass down.

  Behind Cort stood Quinn Faulks, held in place by George’s control of her CONDOR, and just behind her was a shuttle bay door. Cort looked at his wife as he spoke to the assembled group. “Since the day I killed the first rapist on Mars, there has been only one punishment for the crime. No matter who the victim is.”

  Cort grabbed his head for a moment when he was overwhelmed by the thoughts that were coming to him from the people around him. He staggered backward the voices in his head went silent. Kim and Clem ran forward but held up his hand, stopping them.

  “I’m okay now.” In fact he could hear both of them, as well as Quinn behind him, but three voices didn’t seem to affect him the way a hundred did.

  He turned to Quinn and walked to her armor. Then he detached the helmet and looked into the eyes of the women who had used his body nightly for her own pleasure.

  “Sir,” Quinn began. “I…”

  “Shut up,” Cort interrupted. “I held high hope for you. I was willing to give you an entire universe to conquer. But that wasn’t enough.”

  Cort stood a bit straighter and pitched his voice to command level. “Quinn Faulks, you are stripped of rank and decoration, and sentenced to death for the rape of a fellow officer.”

  Quinn began to scream. Cort went on, his voice louder and stronger. “May the gods have mercy on your soul, because the Ares Federation will not.”

  Cort stepped back to the ranks of Marines and signaled, “Now, George.”

  An atmospheric barrier rose to protect the onlookers. Then the shuttle bay door opened and Quinn Faulks was sucked into the abyss of space.

  As the bay door closed and air cycled back into the area, Cort dismissed the assembled troops. Kim and Clem waited for him. “This is going to suck. We need to get home so Bazal can help me figure this out.”

  “What is there left to do here?” Clem asked.

  “I wish I knew. Liz will have to decide that. My head’s not right.”

  Kim asked, “What do you mean, baby?”

  “When everyone realized I was going to kill Quinn, they overwhelmed me with thought. Not the weaponlike stuff the Gryll used, but just thoughts. It was like vertigo. I couldn’t hear a word audibly, but I heard every single thought they had.”

  “Clem, help me get him back to medical.”

  “I can walk, Kim. It didn’t hurt. It’s just overwhelming. Like listening to a hundred different songs at once.”

  “We’re going back to medical.”

  “No. Our quarters. You can ask Ceram to come see me, but I’m going to see Dalek and the wolves.”

  Kim looked doubtful but finally agreed. “Okay, baby.”

  “I’ll use the earplug to get Doctor Ceram,” Clem offered.

  “Thank you,” Kim said.

  “Doctor, this is Clem Addison. Can you meet us in General Addison’s quarters. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  “It’s good to see you adjusting,” Cort said.

  “I just had a conversation with a ten-foot tall bug. I’ll be a suck egg mule if I ever thought that’d be a fact.”

  Kim laughed. “Wait until you talk to an octopus. Without talking.”

  “That Bazal fella? Yeah, that’ll be something.”

  Cort touched his ear. “Ares, go. Yes, Son.”

  “Father, I have been reviewing the telemetry from Quinn Faulks’ CONDOR at the time of her death.”

  Cort stopped walking. Kim and Clem turned to face him as he said, “Go on.”

  “Colo… Miss Faulks was pregnant, Father.”

  The blood drained from Cort’s face. He turned and walked away from Kim and Clem. “Have you printed the new HAWC yet?”

  “Yes, Father. It is ready.”

  “Print me a FALCON.”

  Kim called after Cort. “Baby! Where are you going?”

  Cort’s voice was cold. “Leave me alone.”

  Kim ran to catch up with him and stood in front of him. Cort picked her up and moved her to the side. “I need to be alone. Give me time.”

  “What is it, Cort?” What did George say?”

  “I need you to let me be alone right now, Kim. If you love me at all, you will give me that.”

  “What did George say?” Kim asked weakly.

  Cort looked down and walked away.

  Kim touched her ear when Cort was out of sight. “George, what did you say to your father?”

  When George answered, Kim leaned against the wall and slid to the deck. “Oh my gods.”

  Clem asked, “What is it, ma’am?”

  In another part of the ship, Cort slipped on a new FALCON, then climbed into the new HAWC. “Clear the flight deck, George.”

  When the deck was clear, Cort walked the armor to the same shuttle bay door he had used to execute Quinn, and stepped out of the ship.

  --

  A week later, a shuttle landed near one of the planet’s magnetic poles. The site was shallow depression of freshly disturbed ground, and radiating out from it were thousands of downed trees, but in the center there were a handful of st
anding trunks, all that remained of the HAWC’s warp bubble shock wave.

  Kim and Bane stepped off the shuttle and walked to where the HAWC was crouched. One of it’s gauntlets was covered in dirt, as if it had been digging. Beyond the armor, Cort was in his FALCON, sitting and leaning back against one of the dead trees. Bane ran to him, but when he was close, the wolf slowed down and approached his alpha warily. Kim watched as Cort looked up and allowed the wolf to smell his breath. Then Bane lay down and put his head on Cort’s thigh. The man took off the suit’s glove and rested his bare hand on Bane’s neck.

  Kim walked to her husband and sat beside him. She didn’t try to reach out to Cort like Bane did. She just sat near him. Cort’s mask was off, and Kim studied her husband. He seemed to have aged ten years in the week he had been gone. The scar that defined his countenance was deeper and appeared to be more menacing, but it was hidden by the shadow of a beard that other men of this time didn’t have. She also saw the beginnings of eyelashes where the new eyelid was. Eyelashes were another thing modern people didn’t have. Kim was used to them now, especially with all the humans abducted before the Cull aboard the ships now.

  She could also smell him. In any other situation she would be repulsed by the week’s worth of sweat and grime and dirt that covered her husband, but right then, she just wanted to put her arms around him. She dared not, but it was all she wanted. Instead she just sat next to him and timed her breathing to match his so as not to disturb him. She was going to have to disturb him soon, but for a few more minutes she only wanted to be near him.

  Cort broke the silence after ten minutes. “I buried them over there,” He pointed to a spot that was obviously a grave.

  Kim looked at the dirt mound, somewhat larger than a CONDOR, and covered with medium-sized rocks. She didn’t see any marker, but a rock at one end was larger than the others and she could see some mark on it, though she couldn’t see enough of it to make out if it was even words. She knew she couldn’t stand up and go look at it. Somehow she sensed that would be a betrayal of Cort.

  After another long silence, he said, “When you first came to my quarters on Mars, my fear was that you wouldn’t walk away. Because that meant I would have to lay bare more and more of my soul to you. Now my fear is that you’ll walk away before I have bared it all.”

  “I’ll never walk away, baby. Not even the stars could keep us apart. They tried and I wouldn’t let them.’

  “I’m cursed, Kim.”

  “Not when it comes to me,” Kim looked at the side of Cort’s face. Tears began to stream down his cheek. They found the valley of his scar and followed it like water in some ancient river bed. She leaned in and kissed the tears away before they could find a way to escape from their creator.

  “I’ve killed billions. Trillions maybe. Entire species are extinct because of my wars. A thousand worlds are just dust and debris that orbit the stars that once gave them life.”

  “Cort, I know who I married, and I didn’t marry a man who kills lightly. Every death you have brought, you did so to protect us. Not just Dalek and me, but humanity. The wolves. The Earth. The H’uumans and the Jaifans and the Nill and George and the dinosaurs on Solitude, and hundreds of other species. The warrior in you kills without hesitation, but he never kills without reason.”

  “Now I’ve killed my own child. What reason was there for that?”

  “No one knew, baby. Not even Quinn.” She realized she wasn’t angry with Quinn for raping her husband anymore. She spoke the woman’s name with a softness that belied her own hurt at the betrayal of someone she once considered a friend.

  But I have to live with it forever. This time I don’t know if I can.”

  “When you can’t bear it, I will hold you up.”

  Kim stood and stepped in front of her husband. Bane raised his head, then stood as well. Kim held one hand out to Cort, praying he would take it. “It’s time to go home, baby. Come with me.”

  She watched as Cort looked at Quinn’s grave. No, not Quinn’s grave. Quinn’s body is just a coffin. A sepulchre for a child lost. Another child lost for him. Beyond his control yet again.

  Cort looked up at her and took her proffered hand. After he stood, he pulled her into his arms and began to cry again. Again Kim pulled his head to her and kissed away the tears. When he had calmed, she led him to his HAWC. “There are anchors for you on the top of the shuttle. Strap yourself in, okay?”

  Cort pulled himself into his armor and then piloted it to the shuttle. He climbed on top of it and locked the anchors in place. As Kim and Bane walked into the shuttle, she nodded to the Marines inside the ship, thankful she didn’t need their help to recover her husband. A few moments later, the shuttle lifted off the planet.

  “Why are we going to the Remington?” Cort asked over the comm.

  “Liz has decided to stay here. She is going to take Quinn’s spot as governor.”

  Kim let her words sink in, then she added, “We are taking the Rem’ back because it’s the only ship that is big enough to house the people going back with us. Liz is keeping everything else here. George is leaving her a duplicate of his core as well. Several of the non-enemy aliens on the planet are going back with us.”

  “I guess that makes sense. What about the babies that are still alive? The ones who are brain dead?” Cort’s voice was still cold and distant.

  “They’ve been euthanized. It was the only humane thing to do. Liz and I did that together. The ones who have some higher level abilities are going back with us. I’m going to build a facility for them on Solitude. They will be happy there, I promise.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “As soon as you say goodbye to the people who are staying.”

  --

  “Liz, it’s been one of my greatest honors to watch you become the leader you have.” Cort had already addressed those remaining in this universe, but he was saying goodbye to Liz personally. Her new daughter Melanie was beside her, and Kim, Dalek, and George were present as well.

  “It’s been an honor to serve you, sir. I’ll make sure the tenets of the Ares Federation are upheld here.” Liz stepped forward and hugged him while kissing his cheek. “I love you, Cort. You’ve been like a father to me, and I’m proud to have known you.”

  Cort watched as Liz hugged and kissed Kim, then Dalek, then George’s avatar. Then she took Melanie’s hand and stepped onto her shuttle. As soon as it was gone, Cort said, “Take us home, George.”

  --

  Ben Natsumo watched as David Brinner and Matt Barr activated a particle chamber for the first time. Natsumo hoped the experiment would lead to teleportation technology that could be used to move entire armies across the world in the blink of an eye.

  --

  George piloted the Remington into the wormhole and took his family back to their own universe.

  --

  “Failure. Again,” Matt Barr said.

  “What happened?” Natsumo asked.

  “Doctor Kevellan?” Barr asked.

  “There is no reason for the experiment to have failed. We still have the medallion, so I believe we should set it up again and start over.”

  “We need a person in the chamber. It’s the only way to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “And where, Mr. Barr, do you propose we find someone who is willing to commit probable suicide the name of science?” Brinner asked.

  I know the right man, but he’d never leave Angela and Diane, Ben Natsumo thought. “What about a terminal patient. Someone who has no reason to care whether they live or die.”

  “We can’t even recruit someone for several years,” Kevellan said. “We won’t have Lagrange alignment again for more than five years.”

  --

  “Father, there has been anomaly. As we jumped, I detected an unidentified tachyon burst. It matches the signature of a Nill jump.”

  Kim said, “That’s impossible. The Nill core was destroyed.”

  “There is something wrong.”
>
  “What is it?” Cort asked.

  “The stars are out of alignment. I don’t understand. This is wrong.”

  “What’s wrong, George?”

  “We have arrived at the wrong time.”

  “What do you mean? When did we arrive?” Kim began to tap on her flexpad.

  “George, align the chronometers. Display the exact date using the Earth calendar.”