by K. J. Coble
Crozier pulled himself over and put a hand on Ro’s forearm. Plasma bolts and fragments crackled overhead, cutting trails in the air that could be felt. Ro paused to load a fresh charge pack into his weapon. He looked up, glared into Crozier’s face.
“Ro...” Crozier’s throat was ash dry.
Ro threw Crozier’s arm off, took aim downhill and shouted back, “No! You don’t know, Devin! We’re doing them a favor! They’d thank us if they knew!” He fired a blast into the chaos.
The wind changed, blowing smoke and the seared flesh miasma back across them. Crozier hacked, spit blood. He could barely see Ro, save the retina-scarring splashes of his blaster firing. He grabbed at Ro again.
The Grak’s thrown elbow caught Crozier under the armpit where the armor didn’t protect, the blow stunning with its force. Crozier rolled away, wincing.
“You don’t know! They would—”
A wave of cyan bolts chewed between them. Crozier shrank away, feeling superheated pinpricks sting across his body. He tensed in anticipation of more shots but none followed—chance fire. Crozier raised his head.
Ro lay on his back a meter away, undergrowth smoldering around him. His foot gave an odd twitch. The rest of him didn’t move. Crozier tried to call out but couldn’t find a voice in his ravaged throat. His chest twisted, tightened in an icy knot and he scrambled to his friend’s side.
“Ro...no, oh shit...shit, shit, shit...”
Crozier fumbled with Ro’s helmet, got it off, and cradled his head. The Grak’s forehead was a charred tangle. Crozier felt a sticky mass behind the skull. He tried not to breathe, to smell. He wanted to vomit but held it back, knew he had to be strong. Ro’s eyes stared up, black becoming glassy. His mouth frothed with saliva but little blood. His tongue dangled to one side, twitching with staccato breaths. A little life left, but just a little.
Crozier glanced around. The tree line was catching fire, small blazes gaining fury. He didn’t have much time. The gunfire slackened off. The voice of the guerilla Company Leader crackled over the tactical network, calling for the withdrawal. Mission accomplished.
Crozier looked down at Ro. The Grak’s eyes stared back. His breathing had stopped and nothing lay behind the black gaze. Crozier set Ro’s head down in the grass and pulled his hands free, giving the chest a final pat. He looked away, fastened his mouth shut, refused to look again. He found his weapon, checked its charge, and turned to go.
His lip quivered, the watery feeling was there, behind his eyes, trembling in his chest. He clenched, bit down, bit hard and would not let the collapse come.
He rose and sprinted into the woods.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zarven wrinkled his nose at the charbroiled-blood-shit stink of seared death. His disgust went beyond the carnage around him, grew to encompass the wretched waste of it all. He folded his hands behind his back, the most overt sign of distress he’d permit himself, and dreaded what his superiors would say of this most recent chain of debacles.
The train wreck stretched for two-and-a-half blackened kilometers. Everywhere Zarven looked he saw metal distorted by heat into bizarre mockeries of sculpture that intermingled with the charred lumps of corpses. He took a step, felt something squish, and pulled his boot back without looking down.
Massacred their own kind to prevent us from using them. The bodies were the worst of it, bodies piled in the railroad cut, carpeting ground and gravel. The contorted, mangled forms were no less gruesome for being worm slaughtered. The waste struck Zarven again and the urge to be out of it, above the stench and the ruin compelled him to retreat.
Ozer waited atop the rise overlooking the disaster. Zarven climbed, the sound of grav drives shrill in his ears, drop ships bringing in Minrohaust work crews to clean up the mess. The rails had to be reopened quickly, Teshima’s supply situation already badly exacerbated by the recent escalation in partisan attacks.
“We found four holdout casualties,” Ozer said as Zarven came to stand beside him. “All were thoroughly charred by the forest fire that ensued following the ambush.”
“We were lucky to get that many,” Zarven replied. The air above the rails reeked more of wood fire and was something of a relief.
“The worms are getting better at this.”
“Yes. When you compete with superior players, you learn.” Zarven stretched his mind across the Awareness, took in images of days of uprising, felt suddenly tired. “Perhaps there is a lesson here for us, too.”
“Worms,” Ozer said, his thoughts like water hissing to steam on hot rocks. He had barely digested Zarven’s words. “If they met us in open field, we would give them an education, to be sure.”
Zarven looked at his subordinate. He didn’t need to touch the other’s harmonic to sense the youthful Korvan ferocity within, the uncompromising fire. Zarven twitched with a moment of dread.
The sweeping victories, the precise, ordered march across the stars had spoiled his people. There was only the purity of the ideals, the quest, and the vision. No acceptance, no flexibility. We just don’t seem to learn, anymore. Someone needed to batter them about a little, show them the darkness, tarnish that purity a little. Only there could victory be found. An education, to be sure.
Shaking aside the thoughts, Zarven finally answered. “The guerilla does not seek open engagement. His strength is in the feint and back stab. Their leadership understands this, has been clever to avoid direct action, except with overwhelming force. We must seek a way to force such an action.”
“What of the attacks in Teshima and Forlorn?” Ozer asked, his frustration as tangible as a headache behind the eyes.
“Forget Tehsima. I will not concern myself with Collaborator casualties. They’re useful only for protecting their own kind from themselves.” Zarven switched mental gears, brought up the records from the bombing in Forlorn, the reports from the battalion Intelligence staff, Captain Tedeschi’s people. “Forlorn, on the other hand, may have yielded us something other than body counts.”
“Such as?”
Zarven glanced to his right, to a depression in the ground where worm survivors had been collected and waited under Commando guard. A hundred or so by the look of it, at least a third of them mauled, bleeding. The stink of their shock and fear ripened the air. A good change of subject. Ozer didn’t need to know about Tedeschi’s prowlings.
“Arrange transport for the survivors. Teshima is close enough. Give orders for them to be released back into the general populace.”
Ozer’s shock crackled through the Awareness. “Release, HaustColonel?”
Zarven felt a grin prickle his upper lip. “Release with stories of partisan brutality and Korvan kindness. That should, at least, produce some minor erosion of the holdouts’ grass-roots support, perhaps even stiffen the Collaborators up a little.”
“As the HaustColonel commands.”
Zarven gave an inward sigh. “You do not agree.”
Ozer squirmed mentally, some of it actually twisting across his features. “With respect, my Haust, those worms were due for harvest. We should liquidate the injured and send the rest on for processing. Our cause needs Minrohausts and even a few dozen, a hundred will make a difference.”
“A textfile decision, and one you would be commended for. But we will try different things, this time.” Zarven sensed Ozer’s hesitation, the continued resistance. He put a scolding force behind his tone. “Carry out your instructions, HaustCaptain.”
Ozer acquiesced, turned, and left Zarven alone. Zarven followed the younger officer’s thoughts down the hill, sensed the disapproval, the distaste with the task, and the familiar misunderstanding of the Zarven unorthodoxy. But Ozer was a good Korvan and passed the orders on, got back to work with a mental shake of his head.
Zarven looked away from the wreckage, and turned to stroll along the charred hillside, his feet playing through clumps of cinder, stirring ash and tiny smolders to life. He glanced back the way he’d come, watched Commandos kick the worm prison
ers into motion as his order reached them. He felt the word ripple outward across the Awareness, spread like the fires still consuming forest around him. It wouldn’t be long now...
“Zarven, what is this I hear?” Dramen-Singlo’s words stung like acid fingerprints upon the brain.
“A change of strategy, HaustCommandant,” Zarven replied, wondering why the commander of the 10th Ground Strike Division didn’t have better things to do than hinder mere HaustColonels—even Omniptorate ones.
“A change of—this is absolutely inappropriate. Borderline heresy! Zarven, have you completely taken leave of your wits?”
Zarven bit back sudden rage. “I understand this is a deviation from policy, but think of the confusion that will be caused by—”
“Those were my crop. This harvest was to meet my quota of replacements for the upcoming offensive.” A pause, as Dramen-Singlo seemed to need a moment to gather his thoughts. “I have tolerated much from the Omniptorate, from you, HaustColonel, but this will not do. You will return the worms.”
“I will not.” Zarven wanted to snarl, couldn’t understand the meddling, the wounded pride of this Korvan. Such a minor thing to produce such an explosion. “This is a Omniptorate matter. It became so the moment the guerillas opened fire.”
Another pause. Zarven felt Dramen-Singlo’s fury like shaking fists. But the emotion, pouring undisciplined across the Awareness, subsided and was replaced by a new tone, a flicker of a sly, wicked smile.
“What a contradiction you are, Zarven. I was under the impression that subjugating worms was something of a...passion of yours.”
Suddenly, Zarven was plunged into the sewers of Tsing, into his nightmare, looking upon the worm girl-officer. He wobbled on his feet, felt as if stuck in the solar plexus. Shock and revulsion sizzled through his neurons and Dramen-Singlo’s satisfaction chortled in the background. The bastard’s forcing my own memories on me!
Zarven took a long, steeling breath. “The HaustCommandant knows how to do his research.” He managed the words through a sickened red haze and shook himself, willed the visions away, would not let this violation derail his control. “But my orders stand.”
“Very well. Keep the worms. Another harvest will be required, either way.” A hint of petulance in Dramen-Singlo’s words, but his amusement gave them their real edge. “But the HaustMarshal will hear of this.”
I’m sure she already has, Zarven thought but gave Dramen-Singlo no answer. After a few moments of the silence, the other Korvan cut the connection with disgust.
Zarven ran a hand across his forehead, felt the oily sheen on his skin. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were trembling. He clenched them and looked down at the seared ground, felt the runaway fury foaming up through him. He squeezed his eyes shut, wanted to kill, to demolish, to burn the Universe down, and abolish all hint of a world where filth like Dramen-Singlo, with his rank, his familial genotype, could rule over anything.
Calm came, forced its way through his mind. Zarven steadied his nerves, pushed the images back into the corners of his mind. It was the way things, he told himself, hating the fact. The orders came and he followed them. His control was small, his job his only constant.
And it was time he got back to it.
HAUSTCaptain Tedeschi, 18th Special Commandos Intelligence Section, filled the Awareness with pulses of sickening lust. The worm female grunted in time to each of his thrusts. She had her legs up around his torso, heels grinding into his back, her teeth bared in a rictus of desperate and unreadable emotion.
Curious, Zarven thought as he climbed from an armored hovercar in front of the building serving as Tedeschi’s headquarters in Forlorn. The worm almost seems to be enjoying herself.
The night was thick with humidity and especially dark, with Forlorn operating under blackout conditions in the wake of the day’s bombing. Zarven strode through the front door of what had apparently been a warehouse in past days, past a startled sentry, past a gibbering Intelligence HaustLieutenant. The Intelligence chief was upstairs with the worm, in what had been the warehouse foreman’s offices.
Tedeschi’s excitement intensified and he grabbed the worm’s hair, tugged her head back. Their exertions had both of them gleaming with sweat. Tedeschi’s mind was a cesspool of heretical fantasies, his deviance tolerated by Zarven only because his perversions often yielded surprising results.
Still there was only so much that could be overlooked.
“Tedeschi, you sicken me,” Zarven said as he mounted the stairs to the offices overlooking empty storage floors.
The Intelligence officer froze, his lust evaporated in a shriveling instant of shock. In a rush he was pulling himself off the worm and struggling into his bodysuit. His reaction held little fear, though, and entirely too much annoyance.
“I was not expecting you, HaustColonel,” Tedeschi said with a hint of sarcasm that told Zarven the Korvan didn’t particularly care about the interruption.
“Of course, you were, fool,” Zarven replied in a snap of menace. “Rape worms on your own time.”
“She was quite willing.”
Zarven topped the stairs and approached the door to the office, an angry mental nudge shoving the sentry there out of the way. “I don’t care, you deviant. We need her focused, not used.”
Zarven flung the door open. Tedeschi was still fastening his trousers. The worm female lay on a foldout bed the previous tenant had probably used for long nights. She shrank into twisted covers. Zarven had a momentary flash of the sewers below Tsing, again, shook the vision away. He fixed the girl with a stare—fair, narrow features, long and wild, auburn hair—then glared at Tedeschi.
Tedeschi glanced over his shoulder. “Fix yourself.” The words came out in a voice hard and strong, well-used, as though Tedeschi was accustomed to speaking to the worms on their level. The worm girl began dressing in jerky, uncertain motions.
Zarven turned and closed the door behind him. “This area is secure?”
“More or less.” The other Korvan was short and mean-looking with blue-gray eyes that reminded Zarven of polar waters.
“It’ll have to do. How did you locate her?”
“Luck, I must admit,” Tedeschi replied. “I’d followed another lead to an establishment of ill-repute frequented by Collaborators and low-rankers of the 10th Ground Strike stationed in this region. I saw her there, cross-referenced our files of known sympathizers, and made contact. She was with another, probably the one who brought the bomb in. I let the other go, let them carry out their little strike to avoid giving things away. It cost us some Collaborators and a handful of Hausts of decidedly low potential. Acceptable trade-off, I thought.”
“Ruthless,” Zarven said.
“Necessity was how I looked at it.”
“I notice that you extricated yourself, though.”
“No sense in sacrificing my potential.”
“Now you bore me, Tedeschi.”
The worm girl finished dressing and seated herself on the edge of the bed. Zarven focused on the tousled, street-urchin features again, a segment of his vision dividing off to display another image, a holofile pulled from the databases of the Awareness. The same worm, all right, the earlier image taken in the processing camps, three local years ago. Only the eyes showed the change, the rippling liquid fear in those pools of amber, the resigned desperation that comes to those who know they are beaten.
“A plaything of the Commandant of Camp 34,” Tedeschi interjected.
Zarven pushed deeper into the database, found the complete records of the now-defunct Camp 34, Region 6, found the handprints of the former Commandant everywhere. A deviant to rival Tedeschi, he had been Descended, then finally liquidated for his excesses. All the usual perversions: the obsession with worm sexuality, the power fantasies, the odd fascination with twins.
“Where is the sister?” Zarven asked with a flare of insight.
“Dead, I would g—”
“Where is your sister?” Zarven
asked aloud, turning to face the worm.
The girl stiffened, eyes widening as Zarven’s senses took in the thunder of her elevated pulse, the gleam of rising body heat. She licked her lips and made an obvious attempt at forced relaxation, eyelids drooping, lips pouting with suggestion.
“She died in the camps.”
“A lie,” Zarven said without having to consult his AI’s assessment. He stepped toward her. She held her ground, a brittle defiance. Zarven began to understand a little of Tedeschi’s interest in her. “There’s no need for that. Tedeschi, here, informs me you came quite willingly. You want to help, don’t you?”
Her eyes flicked toward Tedeschi.
“It’s safe, dear,” Tedeschi said in a soothing voice that shocked Zarven because he could sense the falseness behind it. “Tell the HaustColonel what he wants to know.”
“I’m on my own,” the worm said. “My sister has nothing to do with this.”
“Of course,” Zarven replied. He stood over her, arms folded patiently. “You have been with the partisans, yes? Tell us about them.”
“I can’t tell you very much,” the worm said. “They don’t tell me anything. Just my cell leader. They’d kill me if they even suspected I was here.”
“No one is going to hurt you,” Tedeschi said. “We are here.”
“Names would be a good start,” Zarven said. “Locations an even better one.”
“I’ll give you names, but only a few at a time. That’s all I can afford. Too many at once and they’ll suspect. Locations I can’t help you with much. They have camps all through the mountains and I’ve only seen a few.”
“She’s lying,” Tedeschi said to Zarven across the Awareness. “She knows more. Look at her! She’s knows a lot more!”
Zarven met the worm’s gaze. His AI painted schemata across her features, highlighting her pupils, noting her body functions, replaying her words, her voice stresses over and over again. He considered the statistics, the estimates.