Warrior Chronicles 6: Warrior's Glass

by Shawn Jones

  “Does that include me, George?” Clem asked. “For combat?”

  “Yes. Father has already designated a training position for you in the combat team. Your FALCON is printed. After this meeting, I would like you to report to the armory for acclimation and diagnostics.”

  “What about the shuttle, son?” Cort asked.

  “It cannot be considered a proper shuttle, but it will be finished in three hours. It has enough space for eight Jaifans and three humanoids.”

  Cort looked from George to Kim to Tur and said, “If it comes down to it, you will forcibly take the Pledge Mother and Prince Dalek to the shuttle.”

  Kim started to protest, but Cort cut her off. “Shut up, Kim. If I’m worried about you, I can’t fight them.” Turning back to Tur, he went on. “George will pilot the shuttle to Solitude, and you will set up a small base. There you will live out your pledge and establish a colony. Using the three queens that you will take with you, breed a new planet for your people. You will be the Planet’s Primary. The Turans will remain silent until the Federation is established, if it is established. At that time, you will make contact and relate what has happened. Do you have any questions?”

  Tur clicked, “No, Pledge Father. Prince Dalek and his mother will be protected. Thank you for your trust. What if the Federation is not established?”

  “Then you are to use your best judgement. You might even be able to contact the Cuplans, and avoid that war altogether.”

  Kim had been silent since Cort told her to shut up. She snapped out of it with a vengeance. “If you think for one minute that I will leave you, you are out of your godsdamned mind, General Addison. You’ve tried this shit before on Mars, and it didn’t work then either. The only reason I let you leave me at all is because there is always a good chance you will come back. But let me tell you something, Pledge Father; you were pledge husband first, and if it comes down to it, as you say, Tur will make sure our son is safe, and I will die fighting beside you.”

  Cort felt the passion in Kim’s voice and was moved by it, but the warrior in him was in control. He would protect his wife, whether she appreciated it or not. He turned to Tur again and said, “You know my wishes.”

  Tur faced Kim and clicked, “Pledge Mother, our pledge is to Prince Dalek, not you or your mate. It is in the Prince’s best interest that he be raised by at least one of you, so I am forced to agree with the Pledge Father.” His antennae laid flat against his wings. “If it becomes necessary, you will be on the shuttle with our God-prince. Please do not challenge us.”

  Cort didn’t wait for Tur’s words to sink in. He immediately said, “Doctor Ceram will be a part of the shuttle group as well.”

  Kim stood and kicked her chair aside. It slammed into the wall as she stomped out the door.

  The four males watched her exit with trepidation. She was certainly not one to be trifled with, but they all understood Cort’s reasoning.

  “That could have gone better,” Clem said.

  Cort shook his head and replied, “No. It really couldn’t have.”

  --

  On her way back to their quarters, Kim thought of Bazal and wished he already knew her and was able to help her deal with the current situation. When she felt his presence in her mind, she trusted their future friendship, and told him her fears about Angela. Her insecurities that her Cort would want Angela because she was beautiful. Bazal reassured her that even the younger Cort did not love his wife, and her fears were unfounded.

  Kim realized she had passed their quarters and turned around to go back. She halted as a large man with a sneer on his face blocked her path. She recognized the look in his eyes, having seen it years before, in the future, when she was attacked by another man. Cort had killed that man by throwing him out of an airlock on Mars, after breaking several of his bones. Cort didn’t even know me then. What’s he gonna do to this guy?

  The man in front of her had a beard, which meant he was from before the Cull—religious zealots and a plague. Two-thirds of Earth’s population was dead in a matter of weeks. Entire cities were abandoned. During that holy war, in the race to save humanity, science developed nanite-infused blood to fight the plague. Early iterations of the synthetic blood served as a vaccine for the disease that wiped out billions, but also resulted in loss of almost all body hair, as well as most recessive genetic traits and characteristics.

  None of that mattered to Kim, though. What did matter was that she was no longer a widow on Mars, waiting to be used by a man who had no concept of what he had started. She looked at the refugee and touched her ear three times, summoning Marines to her location. “You should turn around and go back to where you came from.”

  One large hand reached for her left breast as he said, “Nah. I think I’m in the right spot.”

  Kim grabbed the outstretched hand and twisted it away from his body, causing him to spin and yell in pain. Stepping into him, she kneed his groin from behind, and drove him head first into a wall, just as two Marines in FALCONs appeared, weapons at the ready.

  She looked at the man crumpled on the floor, and said, “I’ll bet you liked the way they used you on Gryll. They probably didn’t even have to manipulate you. But this is a different world. We kill rapists. Don’t forget that.”

  She told the Marines to take the man to medical bay, then the brig, and admonished them not to tell Cort what had happened. “If my husband finds out what you just tried, you’ll die.”

  --

  After the meeting, Cort left Clem at the armory and went to see what Ceram had come up with.

  “What’ve you got?” he asked as he entered the office. Ceram had taken Cort’s instructions seriously. There was only one complete medical bed in the infirmary. A human abductee, with what appeared to be a broken arm and bump on his head, was handcuffed to it. The Marines beside him looked blankly at Cort and nodded. There was only one large cabinet in view, and a makeshift shelf to hold the rest of Ceram’s equipment.

  Before Cort could ask about the man, Ceram clicked, “I’d tell you to sit down, but as you can see, I’ve followed your orders.”

  “I appreciate that, Ceram.” Cort said. “The fate of the Ares Federation and at least a half dozen species may depend on it.”

  Ceram hesitated, then seemed to make up his mind. “Pledge Father, I must tell you something.”

  Cort’s guard went up as he said, “Go on.”

  In a determined tone, Ceram explained his position, and that of all of the Jaifans on board the ship, with regard to Cort’s son, Dalek. To the Jaifans, Dalek was their reason to live, and they would do anything within their power to protect him, even if that meant going against Kim or Cort.

  Cort couldn’t read Ceram. Any more than Bazal could, he couldn’t read any of the old brood Jaifans—ones that were born during the early days of the H’uuman Empire, or even the latter days of the Cuplans. Ceram faced away from him, and Cort had no way of knowing where the doctor, whom he considered a close friend, was headed with the conversation. “Are you going to try and kill me, Ceram?”

  “No, Pledge Father,” the three-meter tall insect clicked. He put his glass down and turned. “I am just telling you that if any of us have to choose between you and our Prince, we are bound to choose him. Even over your daughter, should you attempt to replace him with her.”

  Cort relaxed. “I get it now. Females are queens to your species. And most males are just breeders. You are concerned that I will expect you to shift your allegiance to Diane if I am able to save her.”

  “The thought has occurred to some of us,” Ceram acknowledged. “I know that is not the human way, but you have adopted some of our traditions, so there has been clicking about it.”

  “Well, shut it down, Ceram. My daughter will never be more than equal to Dalek in my eyes. I expect you to protect her as you would Kim or me, but I know that your blood oath is to her brother, not to her or us.”

  “Thank you for putting our minds at rest, Pledge Father. But you
must at least admit that when you said you were going to alter history to save her, we had a right to be concerned. Would you do the same for a male heir?”

  “I ordered the extermination of an entire species to save my son,” Cort said. “I will go to any length to protect anyone in my pack. Including you.”

  “We would do the same,” Ceram clicked. “But for Prince Dalek, we would go even further.”

  “Now that that’s out of the way, tell me what you have figured out for me.”

  “I wish to modify your Atlas interface,” Ceram clicked.

  The Atlas interface was very old tech, used in the mid twenty-first century to connect warriors to their powered armor. There were new iterations of both the FALCON and the CONDOR that didn’t require it, but to use a HAWC, there had to be a physical connection between the warrior and the suit. It was named for the Atlas vertebrae, where it was attached, and used micro-leads to allow users to control their armor with thoughts. Cort and Jane Munroe, back in the future, were the only two people in the Ares Federation who had the surgically implanted ports in their necks. Modern armor used EEG signals and pressure pads within suits to facilitate movement.

  Ceram detailed his plan to send leads from the interface to Cort’s parahippocampal gyrus, the portion of his brain that was most affected by the stroke. One lead would send a signal to the affected area to lessen the effect. The other lead would temporarily inhibit biosynthetic repair.

  “Can you shield me the way we shield CONDORs from Bazal’s influence?” Cort asked.

  “I don’t understand the biologic mechanism which allows the octopod to use telepathy, but the methods we use to shield or negate Bazal’s influence do not affect you. I can only assume that his telepathy is unrelated to yours.”

  Cort told Ceram about Kim’s contact with Bazal. Ceram looked down at Cort and flexed his mandibles. “You will not be able to override the programming of the system. Were you to do so, it could result in permanent changes to your brain.”

  “So you are taking that choice away from me,” Cort said.

  “Yes, I am. I know your tendencies, and I will not allow you to further damage your brain.”

  “How will I activate it?” Cort asked.

  Ceram showed Cort how to activate the inhibitor, with and without armor, then handed Cort a small plug that fit the Atlas port. “When you are not wearing armor, put this in. Tap your neck and it will activate.”

  Cort looked at the little plug and asked, “When can you do it?”

  “As soon as the Pledge Mother approves the procedure. I will send for her now.”

  “Godsdammit,” Cort said.

  While they waited for Kim, Cort remembered the man with the broken arm. He started to ask Ceram about him, but his mind was filled with images of Kim.

  He stared at the refugee on the medbed, and as the man’s thoughts became clear to him, rage overcame reason and consumed Cort’s mind. He took a deep breath, and faced him fully. From five meters away, he could almost hear the man’s pulse—almost see it steadily throbbing against the skin of his neck. A bead of sweat glistened in the hollow at the base of the man’s throat. Above it, a single bit of what would be the man’s last meal, clung to his wiry beard.

  Cort flexed both fists, and the sound of his knuckles cracking echoed in his ears, even as the would-be rapist thought of the feel of Kim’s breast. His first step toward the man alerted Ceram and the Marines. The refugee wasn’t paying attention; rather his thoughts lingered on how he had hoped the encounter with Cort’s wife would have ended.

  The pair of Marines knew better than to interfere and stepped back. One of them looked at the man and said, “You’re fucked.”

  Cort walked toward them as Ceram clicked frantically into his comm. The bearded man looked unknowingly at Cort and said, “What are you lookin’ at? Never see a broken arm before?”

  “You tried to rape my wife?”

  Recognition dawned on the refugee’s face, but he fought to maintain his composure. “She wanted it.”

  The bead of sweat rolled down his neck into a mass of chest hair. Cort was certain he could hear the man’s pulse now. Another step and he could smell him. Or maybe it was the remains of the man’s final meal, clinging to his facial hair. Is that egg?

  Cort was a powerful man, but with the additional strength of the FALCON, when his fist drew back, and released, it was like a blow from a sledgehammer as it smashed into the man.

  Kim rushed into the room, screaming at Cort to stop, but it was too late. Cort’s fist slammed the man’s Adam’s apple, and continued through his thick neck. The bearded head jerked backward at an impossible angle, followed by his torso, and his body tumbled off the medbed, one arm still locked to the bed.

  Kim looked between Cort and the dead man, then to Ceram. “Doctor, you need to fix this. Now he’s killing people for their thoughts.”

  “Touching you is more than a thought.”

  “But it’s not rape.”

  —

  A thousand light years away on Government World, in his private pool, Bazal swam while thinking about Kimberly Addison. She was telling him the truth, or at least what she honestly believed was the truth, and everyone he had sensed around her believed it too. He had reached out to the planet Solitude, and detected that the being called George was there as well. He did not touch its mind though. At least that part of the human woman’s story was true, and that was enough for him.

  Bazal had already touched the human Benjamin Natsumo, and knew that part of the woman’s story was true as well. He also suspected there was subterfuge behind the Ares ship’s disastrous trip back to this universe. The transition links used by the Nill and their core had been activated improperly. Bazal surmised that the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, which the ship had traversed, had been disrupted by the coincidental, or at least seemingly coincidental, tachyon burst that activation had caused. But he was not ready to share that suspicion with the humans just yet.

  At that moment, his concern was the wellbeing of his own species, who were on the unknown ship that the humans were chasing. There are too few of us now. In Kimberly’s future, I am the last of our kind. I must help them. I cannot be responsible for our extinction.

  The Addisons and their force were the only ones capable of saving Bazal’s brethren. Even the thought of force was detestable to him, but without it, they would be gone. If Bazal helped the Addisons, or even sought other help, he would be altering the future. But if he did not, his species was lost.

  The survival of his own people weighed heavily on his mind, but so did the onus of protecting time itself. Worse, he knew what the counsel of anyone he confided in would be. He couldn’t even trust the counsel of his own kind. It was his burden to decide. If Kimberly Addison was correct, then her mate was carrying a similar weight. Perhaps that would be the bond they were destined to share.

  If any of them survived to see it. I must bond with Kimberly Addison again.

  He woke Kimberly and began to search her mind.

  Three

  “Bazal came to me last night,” Kim said, as Cort walked into the little office of their quarters. He had been to the galley and had coffee for both of them. She was seated in the single chair in the room, and he rested one hip on the desk. She used her flexpad to work with George on the model of the enemy ship.

  “How did it go?” Cort asked.

  “He believes us now, but he’s facing his own demons. I guess the same ones you are. If he supports us, he will be changing the future. But if he doesn’t, he will be condemning his people to extinction.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Cort said. “The future is already messed up. Clearly, this ship doesn’t make it to Earth, because there are no records of it. That means either it’s not going there, or it gets stopped.”

  “So you want to let it go?” Kim asked.

  Cort walked to the view panel and activated an image of the ship they were chasing. After taking a drink of his coffee, he told h
er he wanted to switch priorities.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve ordered George to find a way to track the ship, then I’m jumping to near Earth orbit to rescue Diane.”

  Kim put her own coffee down and stood up. She walked to Cort’s side and said, “I have an idea about that. I’m not sure about the morality of it, but it could keep from altering our past too much.”

  Cort turned to face her. “I’m listening.”

  “You can’t change the way you reacted in this timeline. And if Diane’s body isn’t there, he won’t react the same way you did back then. So there has to be a body.”

  Something about saying the other you felt and sounded weird. They both agreed to use Addison instead. Cort thought about Addison. He was manipulating the man’s life; well hell, he was manipulating his own life in the past, and rewriting history, from his own future perspective. That was mind-boggling to be sure, and something he had to come to grips with. “So what about him?”