Warrior Chronicles 5: Warrior's Curse Read Free Page A

reporters, most of whom were wearing data glasses. Cort knew they were recording his every move and word.
     
    Cort lisped, “Yesterday I promised that every single one of you are safe from me.” His injured eye became too distracting, so Cort took the combat knife of a nearby Marine and cut the dangling organ from the muscles holding it. He handed the eye to the medic standing beside him, and turned back to the group of reporters just in time to see one of them faint, and another one vomit on a colleague in front of him. A coughing fit caused Cort’s blood to splatter on those closest to him, and the muscle tissue hanging from his empty eye socket constricted and twitched like living spaghetti. “Today some of you know that you aren’t.”
     
    “I have one thing to say to the people who killed my friend and loved one. I will find you. And I will rain destruction down on you in ways that will make your gods jealous.”
     
    --
     
    Light years away and several hours later at Bergh Station on Solitude, Kimberly Addison watched her husband speak to the reporters. Cort’s face was ruined again. His right cheek and forehead were covered with cuts and blood. She knew that side would heal fine. But the left side of his face was destroyed. His cheek was torn into two flaps that sputtered blood and saliva with every word. As she watched him cut the dangling eye off, her own already swollen eyes began to stream tears again and her lips quivered. She could see the broken bone underneath the torn flesh around his eye. Part of the socket itself was missing. 
     
    Cort’s uniform was covered in blood. She wondered how much was his own and how much was Dar’s and how much was from the other victims. She thought about the day her first husband’s dead body was carried into the colony structure on Mars. It seemed so long ago, yet every time Cort’s body was broken in battle, that day came back and haunted her. Will there ever a be day when he doesn’t come back?
     
    She went to the boys’ room and kissed their young son on his forehead. As she turned to leave, George woke up. She looked at him for a moment before he sat up and spoke to her.
     
    “I have been watching the newsvids. Cort’s face is injured again. Will he be okay?”
     
    Kimberly motioned the avatar to follow her. It had been so long since she thought of George as anything other than a little boy, she often forgot that George stood for GEOthermal Responsive Gnostic Entity. The avatar in front of her was actually the humanoid interface for the massive, hundred-million year old entity that lived beneath the planet’s surface. Like so many others, Kim thought, George was another outcast that Cort had taken into his family.
     
    When they were back in the main room of the family quarters, Kim sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her. George sat down and she pulled him against her side. “He will be fine, George. Our synthetics will heal him. But he will be sad and distant for a while. He was very close to Dar. We all were.”
     
    “I did not get to spend much time with Dar, but he was very nice to me. I never felt different around him.”
     
    Kim smiled for the first time since the security team told her what had happened. “Cort doesn’t let any of us feel different. We are all outcasts in some way, but Cort has molded us into a family.” Without thinking about it, Kim ruffled George’s synthetic brown hair. “He is an outcast too, you know. Other than you and Bazal, no one is more alone than he is.”
     
    “Sometimes I think his soul is as old as I am. Since Lex’s death, I have learned how to recognize his sadness. He becomes distant and his eyes change somehow.”
     
    “Yeah, they do. I see it too. You are much wiser than the little boy you appear to be.”
     
    “I keep this form for Dalek. Cort has given me permission to change my form if I choose to. I am only restricted in that I cannot take the appearance of any of