Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  “She’s seen far more than she’s implying, that’s for certain. She possibly knows what you suggest she does. But she’s a common girl, a broken one. If she’s seen the lair of the Resistance, she probably couldn’t lead us to it or even find it on a map. She’s a follower; not a hero.”

  “I could get it out of her.” Tedeschi’s arousal spiked in a flash of bloodlust.

  “She may be broken, but like glass she still has an edge, some reserve. Perhaps this sister. I don’t believe torture will get us the kind of answers we want.” Zarven noted Tedeschi’s cooling excitement and suppressed his disgust. “This will take some time, HaustCaptain, more than one night, I’m sure. We’ll pick her apart, peel her like fruit, and get what we need. In the same token we will pick apart the Resistance, peel them, and expose them to destruction.”

  Zarven pulled a chair close to the worm girl and seated himself. He leaned back and let a smile light across his features. Uncertain, she returned the gesture.

  “Now, dear, please. Go on.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The air felt sticky across Sandy’s skin as she hoisted herself over another shelf of rock in her ascent of the mountain face. Behind and below her lay the gorge, its depths now hidden in late summer gloom as sunset faded into twilight and stars began to sprinkle the sky. A lazy wind stirred across her, bringing a faint chill to bare, sweat-streaked arms and shoulders. A hint of autumn bite to the breeze, as well, though fall still lay over a month away.

  Sandy pulled herself up between two boulders, grunting as loose soil began to give. She forced her way through, swearing. It was a playful curse, though. She felt strong, powerful, even. Decent food and medicine had brought steel back to her frame, had reinforced her core. Victories hadn’t hurt, either.

  That was why it was so hard to believe he was gone.

  Sandy paused in her trek, wiped sweat from her eyes. Ro’s furry visage played behind them. His voice murmured in her movements, his barked orders and tree-like solidity hummed in her nerves. If she listened to the wind long enough, she’d hear him call her name, grumble some sort of well-meant disapproval. No fires, don’t silhouette yourself against the sky, clean your weapons, don’t get too close to anyone.

  But he was gone. A chasm opened in her chest, one into which she fallen before and feared she’d stumble again. The fear was there, cold and clutching like death. Defeat, too.

  This wasn’t like with the others. Dying always happened to them and she learned early to expect the missing spots, the misery and the desertion. But Ro had always stood firm, through the disasters and the retreats and the lies and the long, terrible nights, crawling in muck, hiding from pursuit.

  He couldn’t be gone.

  Stop it. Sandy shook herself, flicked away a budding tear, and resumed her climb with angry energy. He wouldn’t want this. He would detest this self-pity. Focus on his legacy. Look at what he’s done, look at the last half-year, the victories, all he helped build. The Movement. Hope. And it doesn’t stop with that...

  He left us an heir.

  She sensed more than actually heard motion above. She froze, scanning across a lip of rock, overhung by a sprawling evergreen. She saw a mound of dirt shift, suddenly become a smart-fiber clad guerrilla fumbling with a rifle.

  “I can see you,” Sandy said, loud with distaste.

  “Shit.” More shuffling and the partisan came clearly into focus, an embarrassed smile flashing out from a forest color painted face.

  “Problem with your weapon?”

  “Left the safety on.” The guerilla was a raw-boned boy, younger by years than Sandy and easygoing with a farm-kid’s drawl. “I knew you was all right, though.”

  “A Korvan can’t appear like one of us?” Sandy added snap to her tone. “Or a spy? An assassin?”

  The kid stumbled for something to say and finally settled on a downtrodden, “Sorry, ma’am.”

  ‘Ma’am’, shit... She knew they were beginning to think of her as something of a nightmare amongst the ranks, real hard-core. Part of her liked that, to a point. She softened her tone. “Work on it.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “Up that trail a piece,” the young guerilla answered. “I was told he meant to be alone.”

  “He’ll see me,” Sandy replied and strode by.

  The path indicated was narrow and difficult between dense wood and over jagged rock. Sandy didn’t have far to go, though, saw Crozier’s form ahead, seated on a boulder surveying a sky going rapidly dim.

  “Good evening, Sandy.”

  Sandy halted with a jolt, had thought her approach less obvious and felt sudden empathy for the sentry she’d just accosted. “Evening, Major.”

  “Heard about the work you did in Forlorn. Really stirred them up. I take it everything went well?”

  “Mostly.” Sandy climbed onto the boulder and scrambled to his side, straining as she realized the steep angle and the precarious position Crozier actually occupied. “Things were tight. We’ll do better next time. Cynthia’s still there, got shaken up pretty bad. I felt it would be better if she laid low rather than make the trip back with the rest of us.”

  “Probably wise. When did you get back?”

  Sandy sat down beside him. He was staring out across the darkening countryside, rolling foothills carpeted in forest. He was unshaven, clad in disheveled fatigues and looked as though he had sweated off pounds in the weeks since she’d last seen him. He’d weathered down to a sharp point, then weathered down past that, so much that she found herself worrying.

  “We reached the outer watch posts two days ago,” she answered.

  Crozier gave a stiff nod. “That means you’ve heard, then.”

  Sandy licked her lips, her mouth feeling suddenly dry. “Yes.”

  “That’s why you’re up here, isn’t it?” His voice had a flimsiness to it, like dried bark. “It’s what everyone wants to talk about.”

  “We don’t have to talk about anything,” Sandy said, heard her voice crack. Tightness formed in her chest. Not Crozier, she thought. He couldn’t be crumbling, too. Not super-human Crozier. She wanted to reach out and touch his arm, but hated the urge, hated that she was seeing him this way, the weakness. She wanted to retreat, wished she hadn’t come up at all. Softly, she said, “We can just sit.”

  Crozier shrugged. His left hand went to his scalp and rubbed across stubble. The other hand was rubbing the wedding ring dangling from his neck. His silence grew as heavy as the summer air. Something let out a howl in the lowlands.

  “This was a mistake. I should—”

  “Our last words were...we were having an argument, arguing right in the middle of...” Crozier trailed off, biting his lower lip and shaking his head. He seemed to laugh.

  Sandy didn’t say anything, waited for Crozier to pick his words.

  “Thing that kills me, Sandy, that I really can’t get out of my skull is that he’ll never know.” Crozier turned and looked at Sandy and the heat in his eyes was not something she’d seen there before. “He’ll never know how it turns out, whether any of this shit mattered. He’ll never see victory, never see us march into Mondanberg.”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to think in those terms,” Sandy said, not certain if she were making a joke or not.

  Crozier snorted. “All a damned mistake, anyway. We weren’t supposed to be there. It was the wrong train, the wrong fucking train.” He stopped himself again, gnawed his lower lip.

  Sandy had heard that part, too. But such things happened, had become a fact of life in a war where the enemy hid behind the lobotomized bodies of your own family members. It was eating Crozier up, though. She could see it in the pinched lines of his face.

  “Let it go, Devin. Somebody always gets stuck in the middle.”

  “I know,” Crozier said with surprising resignation. “Didn’t used to be this way. Not for me. They used to come right at us and we’d kill them. And we’d walk away and tha
t was that. There was almost an honor to it.” He met Sandy’s gaze again. “But here, here everything’s different. Neighbors cut each other’s throats and rat each other out to the Korvans. And the Korvans sit back and laugh and stir the pot, turn us on ourselves and let us slide into barbarism. There’s no sense.”

  “Well...we’ll have to find sense where we can.” Sandy clenched her teeth, had heard enough. She wiggled the bad molar with her tongue, let the pain distract her anger. “Ro wouldn’t like you talking this way, Devin.”

  Crozier’s features twisted slightly and he looked away. He snorted again. “You’re right. He wouldn’t. Probably hit me or something.”

  “There are people here counting on you, Devin,” Sandy said, pressing. “You’re the reason they’re here. Here to fight! Ro’s gone and it’s lousy but there isn’t a damned thing we can do to change it. We have to press on. You have to press on. People are looking to you to finish what he started.”

  Crozier looked out across the darkened landscape, blew out a breath quietly, and gave a slight shake of his head.

  Sandy swore and got up. She turned to go.

  Crozier’s hand caught hers, the grip warm but not hard. She looked back at him. He stared at her with a hint of a smile.

  “I’m not giving up, Sandy,” Crozier said. He pulled at her and she allowed herself to sit down again. “Just taking stock. And...maybe feeling a little sorry for myself.”

  Sandy didn’t reply. Crozier released her hand. She could still feel his warmth on her skin.

  “Ro and I used to talk things over,” he said. “Strategy, logistics, what we did before the war, the weather. Stupid things.”

  “So, you want someone to talk to?”

  Crozier hesitated. “Yes, I do, Sandy. It may be something of a burden on you. You don’t have to.”

  Sandy felt herself smile, couldn’t help it. The super man was human. “Fine. What do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t really know.” Crozier chuckled. “What do you want to talk about?”

  Sandy’s eyes flitted to the wedding ring, dangling free of Crozier’s shirt.

  “Tell me about your family...”

  THE DAMP CHILL OF THE concrete catacombs surrounding the Station was a relief from the heavy heat of above ground. But Cole somehow still found himself drenched in sweat.

  He had asked if there was anything he could do to help out and Logistics had answered. Weapons inventory. Gear and supplies were being constantly moved from the armories in the belly of the Station to the outer chambers of the surrounding underground complex. Even with refugee volunteers, the infrastructure was stretched terribly thin. So yeah, they had a job for Cole Worthy.

  “Shoulda kept my damned mouth shut,” Cole growled to himself. But his heart wasn’t in the complaining. Really, this felt good, using his body for something other than fighting and hiding. The strain of heaving ammo cartons and crates of disassembled heavy weapons had the side benefit of numbing the mind to the point that thought didn’t happen and there was little time for memory.

  He set a box of rations down on pile in the corner of the poorly lit chamber designated for this drop off and paused to wipe his face. For an instant he saw himself scaling the Coreal Mountains with a team of bright-faced college grad students—maybe one of them a young, painfully lithe Kat—in search of signs of heavy mineral deposits.

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and smiled with the image. Maybe a little memory wasn’t so bad.

  Faint shouts and the grunt of machinery in the distance broke his reverie and Cole turned back to work. A pile waited for him on the squat, overworked forklift he’d used to bring these goods up. His arms went around the black, stenciled carton on top and muscles jumped out across them, gleaming under perspiration as he lifted and carried the load over to the proper spot.

  “Light duty, my ass,” he groaned as he set the weight down. For a moment, his head swam in a delicious blur of well-earned weariness as he leaned over the pile. He took a breath and stood up straight with a grin. Honest work, though. Better than the alternative.

  Cole’s eyes strayed over the words across the crate. Another 10-kilo missile launcher. How many had that been in five days? How many blastrifles and grenades and explosives? How many suits of battle armor, how many crates of helmets and electronics and rations and fatigues? Enough to supply a heavily armed company, for sure. Maybe more. Certainly more. This had been going on for weeks, at an accelerating pace.

  Something was going down. He no longer thought of himself as a particularly bright man, but he knew a buildup when he saw one. The supplies were hastened to the upper levels, then distributed just as quickly. Cole rarely saw the same pile twice after he dropped it off. Where was it all going?

  He shook himself back to work with a chill growing in his bones. Better that he didn’t know. He didn’t find himself privy to many of the Movement’s higher echelon secrets, anymore—couldn’t help but be a little miffed after all he’d seen and done. But the fact that he rarely ran into Crozier anymore was not something to be sorry about.

  Where Crozier went, hell followed not far behind.

  Cole leaned over to lift another carton of rations and paused at a sound behind him. He straightened, looked back over his shoulder. The doorway was empty, the corridor beyond shadowed. One of the overhead lamps had a bad bulb that flickered and cast nervous shadows across the room. Voices in the distance, was all it was. Cave sounds. Cole turned back to his work.

  A cord dropped over his head and whipped him back, the rubber tightening like a blade around his neck. A surprised gasp escaped before his breath cut off with a finality that felt like death. He wobbled, tried to find his footing. The cord bit deeper. Cole felt the arteries supplying his brain slamming away.

  A second man whose features were hidden behind a ski mask stepped in front of Cole and punched him in the stomach. The cord loosened enough with Cole’s recoil for a little air to escape his lungs in a high-pitched wheeze.

  Pain brought focus to the haze building in his head and Cole felt rage erupt inside him. The masked man cocked his arm back for another blow. Cole lurched back against the cord-wielding assailant, then bent forward, lifting the cursing attacker off his feet.

  The masked man swung and missed as Cole’s motions carried him out of range. Cole straightened, felt the cord give. He lashed out with his right foot, catching the off-balance frontal attacker in the groin. The man dropped with a cry.

  The cord jerked back, cutting into flesh with the ferocity of the motion. The rear assailant’s knee crunched into Cole’s kidney. Cole saw spots glittering before his eyes, felt his pain-fueled energy wither.

  The masked man rose. He swore and threw his fist into Cole’s solar plexus.

  The cord loosened again, the rear attacker letting Cole slump to his knees. The masked man stood back with fists balled and clearly eager for more. Cole sucked for air, sobbed like a punctured balloon. Spittle leaked from his mouth and his throat burned. What fight he had left sagged into a dead lump in his battered stomach. Into the vacuum rushed terror.

  Not like this... He couldn’t find his voice to plead. This can’t be it...I’m not ready. I haven’t seen my Kat...I haven’t...please not yet...

  “You know why we’re here, don’t you Worthy, you gutless shit?” The voice rasped in his ear, familiar but not. The cord loosened a bit more.

  Cole struggled and managed to get out, “Please...I don’t...”

  The cord bit again. “You left them, you cowardly lump of shit. You and that Shmali left Younger and the others to die.”

  Younger? Younger on the ambush team, in Teshima. Oh, shit. Cole’s brain scrambled to say something, anything. “No...not like that...”

  “Yes, like that,” the voice hissed from behind. “People know all about it, how you ditched your own people and ran off to save your own ass.”

  “We ought to do him right now,” the masked attacker said.

  “Shut up, stupid. C
rozier and his pets would find out—all that bull about us having to be better than that—and then it’d be our asses!” The cord loosened. “No. We’re just here to give Cole our little message. I think he’s getting it, just fine, too. There’s no room for the weak in this fight, Worthy. No room for spineless shit bags who leave their own people behind. Get me?”

  Cole wheezed out a sound his attacker apparently accepted as affirmative.

  “I thought I heard something,” the masked attacker said suddenly.

  “Relax. We’re leaving.” The cord slid away and Cole dropped, heaving to the floor. The voice murmured in his ear. “Oh, and tell your pet monster, Vorsh, people have heard about him, too. Stuff about him before he came here, stuff you probably don’t even know about. Tell that nut-job, we know. And people aren’t gonna just let it slide.”

  “Come on, man.”

  “All right! We’re going.”

  Footsteps faded away. Cole spat blood from a bitten tongue and took long, slow, searing breaths. Strength returned slowly and he started to pull himself from the chill floor. Muscles shuddered with leftover adrenaline and sour fear. He tried to sit up but felt dizzy with the battering he’d taken and slumped over again. He began to sob.

  Cole wasn’t certain how long he lay on the floor, as tears and drool speckled the concrete. The sputtering light bulb was the flicker of something dying within him.

  The hiss of a blade unsheathing caught his attention. He composed himself and sat up. He didn’t look at the doorway, somehow didn’t care. He wasn’t afraid. If Vorsh had wanted to kill him, his throat would already be cut.

  “Quit your sniveling.” There was grim laughter behind Vorsh’s voice. “They didn’t beat you up that badly.”

  Cole wiped his nose and stared aimlessly at the pile of crates in front of him. “You were waiting? You heard them?”