Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  The holographic sight quivered, the scope making a slight adjustment for wind, light and a downhill shot. An easy kill, the target less than three hundred meters away, in the open with the sun in its face while she lay invisible in the shadow of what appeared to be the overgrown ruins of a kiln.

  Her vision blanked, holograms blurring as the scope struggled to compensate. Shit, not now! She opened her left eye, her right hand rising from the fore stock to adjust the scope.

  An Invader stood ten meters away, in Sandy’s line of sight with its back to her, looking downhill. She hadn’t heard it come up, hadn’t sensed a thing, and reflexively sucked in her breath.

  The Invader spun, plasma rifle coming up. Sandy saw crisp details of armored breastplate, the flexible sections at the joints, as she sighted down the barrel because the range was too close for the scope. The Invader’s weapon steadied, the barrel promising death.

  Too slow...

  The edge of Shroville erupted in a thunderclap of steel, snow, and flashes. The shockwave was enough to throw the Invader’s aim the critical millimeter high. Plasma fire snarled over Sandy’s head, hot and tight on her back like sunburn. A sapling behind her crashed into slivers and flame.

  The jolt threw Sandy’s shot off, too. But, as she had aimed for the Invader’s torso, her deviation sent the slug punching through its chin. Its head snapped back and lumpy red painted the tree behind it.

  VORSH WAS MOVING BEFORE the blast settled. Smoke, snow and debris obscured the Korvans on the right but Cole had waited so damned long the team on the left was nearly standing on top of him.

  One Korvan struggled on its hands and knees, an arm chewed by shrapnel and dribbling crimson onto the snow. The other was upright but stumbling. Cole had alternated flechette packs with disruptor charges in his trap and the resulting burst of EMP momentarily scrambled the Korvans.

  The NA-17’s butt plate punched Vorsh’s shoulder, muzzle blasts sharp and tinny. The three-round burst slammed the upright Korvan, dimpling body armor before a follow up shot passed through the meaty part of its neck and dropped it in a fan of ruby droplets. Vorsh sidestepped the falling Korvan and hosed a longer burst across its crippled comrade, kicking snow into a fine mist. The Korvan spun away, writhing.

  A cyan bolt flash-boiled the snow at Vorsh’s feet, prickling exposed skin with needles of scalding heat. A second energy blast shrieked as he ducked into the next hut. The floor of the abandoned structure turned out to be slick mud that Vorsh easily lost footing on in his haste. He landed on his right knee, the pain of impact radiating up into his hip.

  A Korvan stepped into the opposite side of the hut, plasma rifle aimed high, into the space Vorsh would have occupied had he not tripped. The muzzle tracked toward him. The Korvan wore no facemask. Its mouth was locked open in an unheard scream.

  Vorsh hurtled the NA-17, butt-first. It struck the Korvan in the right bicep and the plasma rifle discharged into the air, a deafening roar in the confined space.

  Vorsh launched for the Korvan. It swung its weapon for Vorsh’s midsection but the Shmali used the desperate energy, re-directing the motion with a swipe of his right hand while the left tore his dagger free of its chest sheath.

  The Korvan’s weapon blasted the ground. A fleck of shrapnel glanced off Vorsh’s cheek.

  Vorsh brought the dagger down, finding the unarmored space where the chest piece left off at the neck and plunging through thick muscle into the top of the right lung. The Korvan’s body tensed, trembled with panicked-animal energy. Its mouth opened and closed, silent pain, a plea.

  Vorsh saw scars across its throat where surgery had removed vocal chords, marked it as one of the Korvans’ Living Dead slaves. He experienced a moment of disappointment.

  Vorsh ripped the blade free, cocking his left arm back as he flipped the dagger into strike position. The Korvan’s rifle dropped to the mud. Vorsh gripped its shoulder with his now unoccupied right hand and drove the dagger through the helmet visor into the eye socket.

  The Korvan sagged, air gurgling out of deflating lungs. With his knife imbedded in its skull, Vorsh was nearly pulled down with the twitching, slack weight. He released the weapon and stepped back, shaking with endorphins, riding the chemical high with a tight giggle. Over the dull ring of his hearing, Vorsh heard the rattle of his comrades’ rifles.

  He looked at the corpse and took a deep breath of the rot-shit stink of voided bowels. He knelt, now noticing the ache of his wrenched knee, and gripped the handle of his dagger. It pulled free with a wet grating, the blade impossibly sharp, impossibly beautiful.

  Vorsh wiped the steel off on his pant leg, licked his lips and tasted the salty tang of the bloody streaks spattered across his face. He grinned, giggled again with arousal that built across his skin like electricity, was already tight and hard in his groin.

  He slid the dagger back into its sheath.

  CROZIER REMEMBERED Cole Worthy’s shock charges the instant before the string of bombs went off. It wasn’t enough time to deactivate his helmet. The systems were hardened against some degree of electromagnetic countermeasures, but at this range the blasts blanked his targeting holograms and filled his speakers with a squeal of static.

  He ducked, fingers fumbling for the manual reset under the right edge of the helmet where the lining met the metal. Beside him, Cameron blazed into the swirling cloud of smoke and stirred snow that had been five Korvans.

  Crozier found the switch and put the helmet offline. He came up with his rifle aimed over the edge of the hole in the wall, cursing the mistake.

  Bullets kicked spurts of snow around the fallen Korvans at the village’s perimeter, the bodies twitching as they were pelted. Movement and the flash of plasma on the right drew his eye for a second, was gone as quickly.

  Cameron’s rifle clicked empty and he reached for a fresh clip.

  A smear of cyan fire slammed through the window with the jarring force of a lightning strike. Shattered stone cracked off Crozier’s helmet.

  Crozier didn’t see the Korvan who had fired, saw only its wake of churned snow. He pushed tight against the edge of his hole, sights poised on the jagged remains of the dome on the far left the bastard had already reached. A drop of sweat fell from his damp eyebrow but he didn’t blink. He heard Cameron coughing but couldn’t spare an instant to confirm his state.

  The Korvan streaked into view, a freeze frame between the first dome and the waist high ruins of a second one. Crozier’s blast missed high, the white stream of hyper-accelerated particles pulverized a section of wall in a chalky flashy. Fire from the others came too late, bullets skipping off stone in chips and sparks.

  The Korvan was there, right behind that low barrier a few meters away, close enough to shout, close enough to charge. Crozier’s boosted adrenaline sang in his blood.

  Closing to hand-to-hand with a Korvan means you’re either insane or dead, the old joke went.

  Head, shoulders, and plasma rifle leapt into view. Crozier had enough time to catch a gleam of sunlight off the Korvan’s helmet. He twitched the trigger pad and his world exploded in ringing and flashes.

  Awareness of smoke and the stink of burnt metal and melted fabric came first. Pain and the realization that it came from his shoulder followed. He looked dumbly at half-slagged blastisteel armor, hot enough to be burning him.

  Hissing, Crozier tore the shoulder plate off and left it to sizzle in the snow. He blinked stinging eyes and glanced at Cameron. The boy winced as he sat up, the side of his hood burned away and his cheek beginning to blister with second-degree burn. Crozier gestured for him to stay down.

  Outside their sanctuary, all had gone silent.

  Crozier rose, expected the killing shot. He tried to swallow gritty dryness and took a step out of the hut. He glanced about, caught quick snatches of slain Korvans sprawled in the midst of dark, expanding stains, saw the partisans emerging from their hiding spots.

  Crozier tightened himself, steeled himself, and strode over to the ruined dom
e.

  The Korvan’s upper chest to the neck was a crater. The edges of armored breastplate still glowed as tendrils of smoke drifted from charred flesh and heat-cracked slivers of bone. The sickening, sweet char-pit stench mingled with the hot, plasticky reek energy weapon muzzles produce when firing. The uniform blended white with the snow around it, sprinkled with flecks of red.

  A shot slammed in Crozier’s buzzing ears and the Korvan’s facemask exploded in spinning plastic and a spray of gore.

  Ro stood a few meters from him, lowering his rifle while unreadable black eyes stared at the corpse. In the background, the others strode amongst the bodies, muzzle flashes winking with precautionary shots.

  The Grak’s eyes rose past Crozier. “Are you all right?”

  Crozier turned and saw Cameron being led from the hut by Sandy, whose approach Crozier hadn’t noticed. The boy cupped a handful of snow against his face and nodded.

  His eyes flicked to Crozier. “You got him?”

  Crozier nodded, felt heavy and blank inside.

  Cameron flashed a rotten smile.

  “There was one on the ridge,” Sandy said to Ro. She glanced for a second at Crozier. “There may be more, not far. They’ll know about...these. We should go from this place.”

  “Yes.” Ro looked over his shoulder. The others were converging on him. The wind had stopped and the village felt still.

  “We press east, hard, over the hills and into the Coreals,” Ro said. He looked down, seemed to notice his hands still gripped on his weapon and relaxed them. “It’ll be tough going but we’ll be less easily tracked. After this, the Korvans may be more determined.”

  The others nodded, eyes still glazed with shock and terror only seconds dead.

  “Let’s go.” Ro gestured eastward. Vorsh, Cole and Cynthia turned and jogged into the snow. Sandy paused at Cameron’s side but the boy shrugged away from her touch, stubborn in his determination. They were gone in seconds, too.

  “In an hour I’ll make him stop to take a look at those burns,” Ro said, watching them go. He looked at Crozier. “You’re hit, too, Major.”

  Crozier glanced at his singed shoulder. The fatigues were intact, albeit a bit crisp. The dead Korvan’s seared stench hung in his nostrils, his eyes, made it hard to focus. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

  “That nothing can turn into a killing infection on this world, Major. And we have no antibiotics.”

  Crozier’s teeth ground. The vision of the Korvan ran a replay loop in his brain, the blast jarring him each time. Irritation and frustration built into twin cyan fires behind his eyes and when he spoke, his voice had an edge. “If I begin to fail, if I fall behind, then you’ll just have to leave me, won’t you, Ro?”

  They stared at each other. The wind picked up again, stinging.

  “All right,” Ro replied, his eyes featureless and unquestioning. “Come on, Major. Stay close to me.”

  They turned to follow the others, a tattered pack of crouched, scrambling figures, weary and bloodied with their victory.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The death of the patrol rippled through the Awareness. And like the wave radiating out from the splash in the pond, the shock of Korvan deaths lost strength, poignancy as it traveled up through Company Haust to Outpost Haust to the Battalion commander and on...

  ...until it reached HaustColonel Zarven.

  Zarven stood on Ranzac’s airfield, watching a Fanrohaust crew at work on one of the boxy, stubby-winged Dorex-class gunships Dramen-Singlo had grudgingly allocated to the Special Commandos’ use.

  But the sight blurred away to be replaced by another, a scene of a cold, dead worm settlement.

  It had been a standard patrol into the foothills, the official assignment to investigate orbital debris that had fallen in the sector, probably battle wreckage from the space clash. The real reason was the fresh HaustLieutenant, only a week after his Ascendance, attached to the squad out of Outpost 9 as a training exercise.

  They found little sign of debris but had picked up the trail of a worm band, possibly armed and certainly unregistered. At first, the HaustLieutenant—proudly carrying the earned name of his genotype, Ordrek—suspected them to be poachers out of Forlorn and ordered them followed, despite protests from the squad Fanrohaust.

  As they neared the ruins of the unmarked worm village, the youth began to worry about his assessment. He ordered the Fanrohaust to circle the settlement and find an overwatch position, then led the squad in, himself.

  Scanning the memories of others was rarely an easy proposition, particularly when charged with the shock and fear of Ordrek’s last moments. Zarven followed like a ghost the approach, the cautious, text-file deployment of the Minrohaust screen into the ruins, the tingling moment of certainty when Ordrek recognized the trap. Then blasts and the awful shriek of the electromagnetic pulse, deafening heightened senses and blanking the Awareness in ringing pain as shrapnel diced his command into gobbets of bloody hamburger.

  Zarven sensed the tightening vice of Ordrek’s panic as the young Korvan darted for cover with the whine of bullets around him. He could taste it, coppery at the back of the tongue as Ordrek realized he was alone. Then the lightning crash of a modern blaster weapon.

  Disturbing. Zarven halted the replay and shook off the dead Korvan’s final terrified instants as one might a dusting of snow.

  Ordrek’s assessment projected a maximum of four worms in the band but the overwhelming volume of fire in the ambush suggested more. The bombs—those annoying EMP charges the holdouts were so found of—made this band clearly better armed than the semi-feral nomads often described.

  But blasters? Records showed few of those in the guerilla activity of the last twenty months. Any the worms had would be left over from Defense armories and would be nearly impossible to keep charged for long. Maybe the Free City States were slipping weapons through to the holdouts.

  “Can you have that ship prepped for flight in an hour?” Zarven asked the Senior Fanrohaust directing the work on the Dorex.

  Irritation mixed with apprehension in the Fanrohaust’s response. “Barely, yes, Haust.”

  “Make it so,” Zarven said, ignoring resentment brimming in the other Korvan’s mind. One overworked Fanrohaust was not a Omniptorate problem. Zarven switched to another harmonic. “Churvak?”

  The presence of HaustLieutenant Churvak coalesced in Zarven’s mind, bright with youth. “Yes, HaustColonel?”

  “Ready headquarters platoon for insertion,” Zarven said.

  “The ambush?”

  “That’s right. I’d like a closer look.”

  “With respect, is an air insertion wise with the reports we’ve had of worm anti-air capabilities?”

  “The nearest local unit is three days march and I don’t want to wait so long that the trail cools. We’ll drop ten kilometers short and move in the rest of the way on foot.”

  “We?”

  “You’re a bit new to this command to be asking so many questions, HaustLieutenant.”

  Zarven felt Churvak recoil as if struck mentally. Some of the younger Korvan’s edge dulled with darkening thoughts of “The Zarven’s” reputation for feeding junior officers into the meat-grinder.

  “I will prepare the platoon, HaustColonel.”

  Zarven broke the link with a curt mental nod. For a moment, his own thoughts darkened at the image of him found in Churvak’s young skull. If he so desired, a probe could provide Zarven the designation of every Korvan whose comments and attitudes had contributed to forming Churvak’s opinion of his commander. A waste, though.

  As much as anyone, Zarven had cultivated the reputation.

  TAN-EZATZ’S STAFF HOVERCAR glided over the bridge spanning the Estrek River, whose churned brown vastness bisected Mondanberg. The HaustMarshal took note of barges carrying supplies from the interior of the Coreal Valley as well as the swarm of tinier skiffs and junks, worm merchants and riffraff, plying their wares on a black market only barely tolerated.

&
nbsp; The northern bank of the Estrek rose into smooth, orderly looking heights. Before the occupation, these hills held Mondanberg’s wealthier neighborhoods. To a degree, they still did, though the upper class now subsisted off rations and the goodwill of the Korvans in exchange for their collaboration.

  The hovercar and its escort of armored battle-cars reached the north bank and wound up into curving, well-groomed streets. Shops were open and worms walked the sidewalks, enjoying the sunlight, though a late-winter chill clung to the air. Some made an attempt at cordiality, false smiles as the convoy passed. Others shrank from the sight, hid their faces or stared empty eyed.

  Tan-Ezatz’s hand tapped the flechette pistol at her side absently.

  “They seem to be accepting us better these days,” said HaustMajor Kavelton, seated beside Tan-Ezatz. The young Korvan was on Bakta’s staff, a protégé of sorts, and had come in his stead.

  “I suppose they are,” Tan-Ezatz replied without meaning it. She had a difficult time being around Kavelton, his harmonic bright to the point of blinding with his youth and energy. And his optimism. Where Tan-Ezatz saw a dangerous pack of animals to be harvested and never trusted, he saw in the worms victory and affirmation of the Korvan Imperative.

  “Perhaps we won’t have to harvest them all,” Kavelton said. “These, maybe, we can tame.”

  “No. They will all be harvested.” Tan-Ezatz injected an undertone of warning for Kavelton’s sake. “The Omniptorate would never tolerate worms running loose, no matter how tight the leash.” She was satisfied to sense the younger Korvan’s tremor of fear and comprehension of the unspoken message. He was bright and favored, but such thoughts bordered on dangerously liberal.

  The purr of anti-gravity motors rose to a yowl as the hovercar ascended a steep incline paved with old-fashioned bricks. Wrought iron fences and occasional stone walls traced grand perimeters around large yards and ornate residences to either side. A sprawling mansion occupied the crest of the hill, gaudy as a crown.