A Warrior's Sacrifice (16 page)

"Let's head back," Corwin said. He turned and started walking. The others fell in about him.

"What do you make of that?" Phae asked.

"They were making a statement — the Ashi-Kage, I mean. They were showing the Company Master what they could do, and that they weren't afraid to do it."

"Do you think they have pressure on her to work with them?" Phae asked, sliding in close to Corwin.

"No doubt," Chahal said. "That's how they work. They get a hold of the people in one's command and work their way up to the top. Those CPs back there," she hooked her thumb over her shoulder, "were likely holdouts or those who represented the holdouts."

Corwin's com chimed. He opened it and saw the waiting message with attached investigation folder from Prensky. With a few swipes of his fingers he sent these data away to the Oniwabanshu and then closed it again. The com vibrated before it had reached his pocket. As he flipped it open, a grim smile spread across his lips.

Phae's eyebrows bunched. "Smiling doesn't suit you."

"It isn't a joyful smile."

"I know," Phae said. "That's why it scares me."

The drop point was a fake garbage chute three quarters of the way down a dead-end alley. Auta nodded at the lone Wei soldier who sat at an outside table on the opposite side of the street, sipping at a beer. The soldier did not nod back.

Auta waited at the alley's entrance, thumbing through his com as if he had something important to attend to. When he was sure that no one was watching, he slipped into the alley and deposited his stolen goods in the bin.

With his task done, a monumental weight lifted from his shoulders. Auta slumped back against the wall, breathing a sigh of relief. He'd decided to leave the city, to go to one of the other settlements and start over again. This time he would keep his head down and stay away from the wickting Ashi-Kage!

He stood up and straightened his worn clothes, then strolled from the alleyway like he had all the reason in the world to be there. He froze. The Wei that had sat in guard across the street wasn't there any longer. His beer mug lay sideways on the tabletop. Beer dripped off the edge into a dirty pool on the ground.

"Would you like a pastry?" asked an old woman with sun-bleached hair and leathery skin.

"I, what? No." Auta shook his head. "None for me, thank you." He turned to walk past her only to find a stun gun shoved into his stomach.

Auta shied away from the gun, but the woman kept it pressed against him until he bumped into the edge of her cart. "W-what is this?" he asked.

She didn't say anything, just smiled and pulled the trigger.

Fifty thousand volts convulsed Auta's body seconds before a hypodermic punched through his clothes and skin, depositing a tranquilizer. The woman's gnarled hands guided Auta's slumping body into the open hatch of the cart. The lid slid closed and locked. Auta didn't know — and wouldn't know for several more hours — that he wasn't alone in the dark enclosure; the Wei was there as well, just as incapacitated as he.

The Oniwabanshu Operative whistled as she pushed the cart down the street. She had a few hours yet before the others arrived, and she was determined to get a head start on the interrogations.

Phae and Corwin were in the showers cleaning up when the sirens rang, loud and deafening, in every recess of the city. The two Maharatha rinsed themselves clean and sprinted naked through the halls to their storage room. Within minutes they were clad in their armor, jogging to the defensive walls.

Kai and Chahal were already there, helping to arrange the Wei and CPs for the oncoming assault. Hundreds of Humans from the outlying settlements poured in through the city's gates, carrying with them their rusted pick axes and well-used guns. The elderly ferried children away to safety deep inside the city.

Their previous duties forgotten, the Support Caste ran among the readying defenders distributing battery packs and cans of ammunition. The defenders checked and rechecked their rifles, and they fastened their swords, for the only enemy that existed — now that the Quislings had been destroyed — were the Choxen, and they would bring their Grunts.

As the last of the settlement refugees passed into the city, the defenders swung the gates closed, bolting and barricading them from the inside. They were then rigged with explosive charges, and the denizens prepared themselves to fight to the last man and woman to defeat the Choxen threat. As they waited, the sirens died. The sudden, empty sound-space seemed louder than the sirens had a moment before.

Then, as though hit by an electromagnetic pulse, the city's electronics died. All coms went down; weapons and vehicles turned off; and above them all, the thing the Humans relied on most, the ion shield, winked out of existence.

A blue sky with a few puffy clouds took the shield's place. The populace bore the setback with the gritted teeth and the determination of farmers and laborers and soldiers.

Through the speakers, the dead speakers, the Republic's two-tone chime sounded, and eyes turned upward.

"This is an official control from the Oniwabanshu. Drop your arms and lay face down on the ground."

The citizens looked at one another in surprise. This was not the enemy of the Republic, but the Republic itself?

The message sounded again. Many complied, tossing their now useless rifles or usable but superfluous axes or swords aside and lying face-down on the hard plasteel.

From the forest that surrounded the city, tanks and hover carriers crept forth to form a contiguous line of soldiers, each emblazoned with the Oniwabanshu crest. From the air, small specks appeared on the horizon. With each passing heartbeat they grew, ripping through the sky to screech to a stop over the city; their rolling sonic booms followed after. Ropes dropped from the hovering ships, and hundreds of Inquest soldiers slid down.

By now the situation was clear, and the Citizens went prone. But not all went without a fight. In a few places the Ashi-Kage fought, for they would be sentenced to death anyway, and they managed to take a few of the Inquest soldiers with them before they died.

In the fields below the city, Technicians and Laborers erected the buildings that would act as holding cells, interrogation, and execution rooms.

Corwin and his Void — their suits still functioning — hopped down from the city's walls and jogged to the line of Oniwabanshu defenders. They approached the Inspector General in charge of the operation, a tall, slender, stiff-backed woman with sharp eyes and a sharper nose.

"Void Commander Shura reporting, ma'am," Corwin said, saluting.

She nodded back. "Commander."

"Anything me and my people can help you with?"

"No. We have procedures, we stick to them. Inquest agents only."

"I understand, ma'am. We'll stay out of your way." Corwin said with a bow. Phae remained quiet despite the curtness of the Inspector General's remarks; she knew better than to wickt with someone who had the authority to detain an entire city.

"Is there anyone in the city that we should spare an interview? Anyone that you know to be blameless?"

Corwin thought a moment of Yanmao. He'd warned Corwin of the Ashi-Kage's presence in the first place after all; and of Prensky and her ongoing investigation despite the dangers to herself. "No," Corwin said, "though there are six Quisling children in jail that should be spared the Inquest's needles."

"Done. The overt enemies of the Republic are not my concern…" She trailed off and touched a finger to her earpiece, eyes glazing as she listened. "We seem to have a situation. Come with me." She grabbed a nearby hoverbike and drove off without waiting for Corwin's response.

The Maharatha followed the Inspector General to the opposite side of the ring of defenders. Shota and his soldiers waited facing the Oniwabanshu's. She pulled up beside her line of troops and dismounted.

"What is the problem here?" she asked.

Despite his dark skin, Shota's face was red with fury. "We are here on official Beirat business! We cannot be barred from this city! We need access to its facilities and communication terminals and computers! We have Intergalactic Diplomats with us, for wickt's sake!"

"I know who you are, and why you're here, Shota."

The color in Shota's face deepened. He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

"Despite your assumed authority, I have complete jurisdiction here, and," she leaned forward, "you should rethink how badly you want to get inside that city, or I might just start to think that you have something at stake with its inhabitants."

Shota's eyes went wide. "No, uh, no, ma'am. We'll make do out here."

"I thought you might."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Shota shook himself free from the aura that surrounded the Inspector General, the color returning to his face. "Well then, I'll need to make other plans."

He turned to leave, but Corwin's armored hand snaked out and clamped down on his shoulder. "The IGA delegates are here?"

Shota glanced at the Maharatha's hand, up into his visor. "Yes. They landed earlier this morning."

"Why didn't you inform us?"

"Because it isn't any of your concern.
We
are their protectors,
we
are their guides,
you
aren't needed or necessary." Shota pulled himself free, stumbling a few steps. Straightening himself and his uniform, he marched back over to his waiting convoy.

Shota had arranged his convoy in a full defensive circle around six transport carriers of obvious IGA and alien design. The angles and slopes that the Human Engineers enjoyed so much were nowhere to be found. Instead the vehicles were smooth and rounded like bubbles that had coalesced, and each transport was greater in size than even the largest of the Humans' escorting tanks.

They were all hover propulsion, though of a quality that Humanity didn't yet possess. They didn't repulse the ground, spraying dirt and twigs and other small bits of things around, they glided, soft, so that the only reason that the green grass moved at all was because of the breeze that blew out of the west.

"What should we do?" Kai asked.

Before Corwin could answer, a hatch opened, swinging upward on invisible hinges. Others followed suit and disgorged dozens of armed and armored Car-karniss. They were the warriors of the Prehson, the only species in the IGA that had sworn fealty and everlasting servitude to another.

They looked like the Earth's Gila monsters found in the Normerican southwest, except their heads topped two meters and they were bipedal, their arms and legs well adapted for dexterity, speed, and power. Every single one had a short snout with rows of sharp teeth, their nostrils rimmed with yellow. Armor plates hid the bulk of the scales that covered their bodies, and over top of their armor each wore an eggshell-white tunic, a symbol etched down their long torsos.

The emblem was a half circle with a line attaching the top and bottom segments. For some reason Corwin couldn't explain, it seemed as if the other half of the circle should be there, but it wasn't. The missing piece wasn't a design flaw, forgotten during the manufacturing process; it was made to be blatant and glaring with purposeful omission.

The Car-karniss spread out to form an additional ring around the central transport. Its hatch opened, and one of the most revered of the IGA alien species appeared in the hatchway.

Atop a long, slender neck sat a head shaped like an inverted teardrop, with two cloudy, black, unblinking eyes. The neck met at a wide torso, where two delicate arms with six-fingered hands rested, folded atop one another. They had an airy appearance, like when a bird folds its wings while at rest.

The four legs atop of which all was perched articulated backward, the forelegs taller than the rear so that the torso and head were held upright at all times. A robe, the same eggshell-white with a closed half-circle as the Car-karniss bodyguards, was draped around its body. The clothing adding a billowing, residual motion to the alien's gait.

The Prehson advanced, the Car-karniss keeping pace around their charge, two guards staying within arm's reach on either side. They passed through Shota's defensive circle without breaking stride; powerful legs took them up onto and over the intervening vehicles. As the Prehson passed between the Beirat solders and their vehicles, they bowed, a few prostrating themselves atop turrets or in their vehicles' cabs.

The line of Car-karniss passed around the Maharatha, and the Prehson stopped just a meter from the four Humans. The Car-karniss stopped as well. "I," said the Prehson through mouth slits on the underside of its teardrop head, "am Yerama-gar." Its voice sounded like the rustling of dry leaves.

The Maharatha dropped to one knee, all except for Corwin. Phae reached out to pull him down, but Corwin brushed her hand away. "I am pleased to meet you Drengin Yerama-gar," Corwin said. The translator built into his helmet converted his Human words into Prehson speech.

Yerama-gar regarded Corwin with unblinking eyes. "You do not show subservience to your liberating species."

One of the Car-karniss guards let out a growl-hiss, its forked tongue, thick and blue as night, licking the air. It stepped forward, swinging its rifle at Corwin.