Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  “Then I suppose the Omniptorate should—”

  “Enough! Both of you!”

  Zarven recoiled from Tan-Ezatz’s sudden presence. Dramen-Singlo subsided as she focused her attention completely upon Zarven.

  “Zarven, as always, you go too far. Now listen to me, you fool. The situation to your south has been badly botched. It will be time before Dramen-Singlo salvages things for a decisive blow and time is not something we can give the worms. I told you before; you are our hope. You are the killing thrust. Deliver it.”

  Zarven twisted up inside, marshalling his emotions. “You realize any attack I launch may do no more than kill Korvans needlessly.”

  Tan-Ezatz paused for a long moment. Her response came, finally, like a chilly wind across his face. “Be that as it may, you have your orders. Carry them out.”

  Tan-Ezatz’s withdrawal from his mind left Zarven shaking. He glanced uphill where his Commandos, his people, killed and were killed amongst rocks and brambles and could not edge even a few meters further.

  TWILIGHT PULLED SHADOWS over Crag Mountain. Zarven didn’t make use of his vision enhancements on the way up the hill, was thankful not to notice the Commando dead strewn through this wretched place.

  Churvak and the bodyguard detail—plus Korvans detached from the rest of headquarters company—slipped through the woods around Zarven. Behind, Tetzrak and two of her platoons swept uphill. Ahead, fitful snarls of energy fire crisscrossed in firefly patterns. The fight began to heat up as Korvans sensed the approach of their comrades and the worms recognized the signs of a buildup this sector.

  Zarven had to crawl the last few meters to a forward position behind the wreckage of a log and rock breastwork. He settled beside a grizzled-looking Senior Fanrohaust. The rest of the relief force spread into position around them.

  “We tried, my Haust,” the Fanrohaust said. “I’m sorry, but we tried. HaustLieutenant Mekkla and half the platoon are up there.”

  Zarven risked a look uphill, now bringing visual enhancements online.

  The worm positions lay just below the crest, trenches and berms of rock and dirt and even bunkers. Just below them stretched a hedge of felled trees with the branches cut sharp. The position was not hasty or improvised. The worms must have intended this as some sort of emergency fallback all along.

  The ground below the worm line had been swept clear by fire. Ashes of scorched undergrowth fluttered on hot air around blackened boulders. Sullen, yellow flames licked at the few still standing trees. The open space was littered with Korvan slain.

  “We tried,” the Fanrohaust repeated.

  Zarven gave the other Korvan a comforting mental pat. He took a long breath, was surprised to find his mouth dry with fear. He felt trapped, as if in the sewers beneath Tsing, once again.

  “Commandos! I know you’re all tired of shouldering the weight of prissy Korvans too proper to finish a fight when it gets nasty. Well, your rest and respite lay up there, beyond that worm line. Well, I’m tired of this shit! I’m going up there!”

  A feral roar from the Commandos crackled through the Awareness. Zarven grinned like a maniac. The air began to shudder with the approach of the massive artillery mission he had ordered from Outpost 9.

  Zarven rose and leapt over the breastworks with his Commandos surging behind him.

  “Up, Commandos! Up!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Crag Mountain stood out under the continuous glare of the Station’s fire, details sharp and shadows hard. Particle beams passed the heights at so low an altitude Crozier felt the tug of hot wind. Debris and smoke sucked into wild vortices overhead as white fire gouged tunnels through air that slapped back into the momentary vacuum with an ongoing craaaasshh.

  Crozier forced himself to look downhill from the trench. There had been a lot of movement, moments ago, and now this heavy bombardment that the Station seemed only just able to hold at bay. He blinked stinging eyes. The nearness of the energy salvoes left electronics partially distorted. He saw the hard angles of Korvan armor and helmets rise behind their positions below.

  Oh, my Holy God, Crozier thought, disbelieving through the chill as the hillside below him boiled with movement. A charge. They’re fucking charging us!

  “Get back!” Crozier screamed, not certain his helmet would transmit in the chaos. “Get out of the trenches! Get back!”

  He was up and moving before the words were out of his mouth, his world a blur of chill and motion. But the other partisans reacted with seeming sluggishness. Their mouths hung open with screams that could not be heard over the din. The angle of the hilltop and the height of the partisan works would protect their backs until they got over the crest, but only if they were quick. Crozier knew it was his augmentations, but couldn’t help his shrieks of rage. They had to fucking move.

  A volley of Korvan rifle grenades turned one of the guerrilla bunkers into a half-sphere of expanding plasma. The shockwave slapped across Crozier, threw him to the ground at the crest of the hill. The impact jarred through his left knee. He felt a moment of hammering pain before the chill spread and swallowed it. Partisans scrambled by. Crozier dragged himself on through the crossfire.

  The rear area of the partisan position was strewn with fallen trees not yet put to use in the trench line and emptied crates for the heavy weapons Svetlana and her company had brought up with them. In the near distance, the mountain containing the Station glowed with the hellfire spewing from its peak.

  Crozier reached one of the crates and collapsed behind it. The knee didn’t feel right. He ignored it and turned with his weapon back the way he’d come.

  Korvans surged over the trenches, the first ones cut down by partisans who either hadn’t heard the order to fall back or were too petrified to heed it. The holdouts were overwhelmed in a flurry of paralyzing kicks and crushing butt-strokes. Grenades slammed. Flechette pistols snarled. The Korvans swarmed though the defenses and kept coming.

  Crozier shot a Korvan through the weak point in its armor, below the armpit. It dropped and writhed as if hit in a nerve. Around Crozier, partisans realizing there was no place left to run blazed at the Korvans from behind the crates and felled timbers. The hoverjeep Crozier had ridden along to Crag Mountain came whirring up the hollow behind the hill. The driver stopped and got up to man the rear-mounted repeat blastcannon, raking the trenches from left to right.

  The Korvans staggered and fell back to the trenches to consolidate.

  But only for a second.

  “Keep them back! Hold them there!” Crozier’s throat burned. He reached up to his helmet with his free hand, not trusting his pinched, teary eyes to blink the proper patterns to command the helm AI. Shaking fingers pressed to the underside of his helm liner and brought up a hologram made scratchy by interference and damage.

  Hours—what seemed like years—ago, he’d ordered the position sewn with detno-cord linked high explosives and flechette packs for this sort of last-ditch effort. Icons blinked readiness. A plasma blast chewed his crate, spraying him with splinters. If this doesn’t work, we are well and truly fucked...

  Crozier touched the command keys.

  The ground slapped Crozier from underneath. The overrun length of trench line vanished in a wall of churned dirt and yellow sparks. The dull roar of the blasts sounded faint compared to the Station’s fury. But a curtain of debris showered over Crozier. For a moment, he could hear the hoarse cries of wounded Korvans.

  Partisans rushed by, muzzle flashes and blaster bolts piercing the dirty haze. There was a flurry of gunfire and crashing grenades, then shouts and even a few cheers. The firefight subsided as the Korvan survivors fell back to regroup.

  More partisans, these some of the ones who had fled half way down the reverse slope, were coming up. They seemed to move with startling speed, and Crozier was now the one mired in sluggishness. His leg began to hurt. He blinked. The desperate fight of the Korvan breakthrough couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes.

  A
hand came to rest on Crozier’s shoulder. A voice spoke, echoing as if from the top of a well. “Major? Are you hurt?”

  Crozier looked dumbly at Svetlana. The woman’s skin was drawn so tight across her face as to give her the appearance of a skull. A sooty smear along the right side of her helm marked a plasma bolt near miss.

  “Major? Major, the Korvans will be looking for more shortly. Should I have the medics take you back to the rear areas with the wounded?”

  Crozier touched Svetlana’s arm. “Help me over to the hoverjeep.”

  She eased him up. The knee really started to hurt. They hobbled over to the hover vehicle and he nodded to the driver, who jumped down to the controls and lit up the antigrav motors. Crozier put his weight against the blastisteel hull and lowered his helmet visor.

  At a command, holographic tactical schemata lit across Crozier’s vision, taken from data fed to his AI from the Station. The partisan lines had shriveled back into a battered right angle with Crozier’s position nearly at the point. A small gap still remained in the center, but the sandstone wall of Crag Mountain and treacherous hollows of marsh and spinebush meant the Korvans would be unlikely to take advantage any time soon.

  The Movement held on, albeit to a fraction of what they controlled a couple weeks ago. But they held.

  So few solid block icons remained to so many hazy outlines, and so many more units that simply no longer appeared. Crozier had to get them out, call it off before there was no longer a Movement to salvage. He pulled himself into the passenger’s seat of the hoverjeep and met Svetlana’s gaze. It made him sick—giving these kinds of orders was always easier through holograms—but he felt better she heard it to her face.

  “Captain, pull in everything you’ve got left. Tighten up and hold them. And get your wounded out. I’ll send you as much help as I can find.” Crozier didn’t quite choke on the lie and Svetlana didn’t appear to recognize it for what it was. “Hold them, Svetlana. Hold them until you receive the evacuation signal. You will have artillery support for a few minutes after that. Then it’s scatter time. Understood?”

  The woman blinked and the creases that appeared in her face let Crozier know his non-truths had not escaped her entirely. She licked her lips and replied, “Yes, sir.”

  Crozier stared at her, faced his deceit. “Good luck, Captain.”

  “Yes, sir. Good luck to you, too, sir.” Svetlana turned and strode back toward the front where the crackle of a firefight was building.

  Shit. But for cruel fate and the Korvan breakthrough, Svetlana’s company would already be on its way to freedom, escorting one of the last supply columns out of the Station, not getting ground to shredded meat as a rearguard.

  Crozier shook himself, wouldn’t think on it, had no time to think on it. He tapped the driver and the man turned the hovervehicle around and brought it skimming down the reverse slope of the hill.

  SANDY CROUCHED BESIDE a tree, trembling with fatigue and fear and frustration. Tears tasted salty on her lips. She slammed her fist against the trunk. The crucifix throbbed against her breast. I’m sorry, Mother. I tried to find her. I tried to protect her. Why, why, why did she run off like that?

  She thought she had Cynthia’s trail but nightfall turned the terrain into twisted darkness littered with the wreck of battle and teeming with Korvans and knots of partisans desperate to avoid them. A hell of a fight rumbled to the northeast. The Station was firing in support, providing some illumination. Nervous flickers caused strange tricks of shadow and light.

  She has to be close, Sandy told herself again. A little more courage she didn’t know she had lit through her. She steadied, tried to push off the tremors, and rose. The blastrifle felt heavy in her hands. Just a little farther, a little longer. I’ll find her.

  Blackened forest pressed in as she slid through tugging undergrowth, hunched low to the ground. The going was slow and panic and hopelessness constricted in her throat. Her foot bumped something she thought was a log but then realized was something else. More bodies. Partisans. She’d seen too many of those already, ruined in every conceivable fashion. There had been wounded, too, moaning for water in the dark. Sandy felt evil for the way she forced herself to ignore them.

  Movement to her right. Sandy dropped into knee-high brambles and listened. Leaves rustled. A twig snapped. Not Korvans. They were never that clumsy. But the direction was wrong for it to be guerrillas.

  Sandy rose to a kneeling position and brought the blastrifle to her shoulder. Her heart slammed in her chest.

  The Station lit the sky with a long barrage that cast streamers of white brilliance through hazy forest. Sandy saw a shape trudge toward her. The slender form became a young woman. Sandy wanted to cry out.

  Cynthia.

  But the form taking shape at her back froze Sandy in place. Adrenaline brought out hard angles of armor and a black visor in a grated helm that seemed to stare right through her.

  Undergrowth parted three meters to Sandy’s left with a gentle swish. She spun, weapon still up. The Invader hadn’t seen her, but heard the motion and was turning. She had the moment of advantage that made the difference between saving her sister and dying.

  Sandy put a blaster bolt into the Invader’s chest and hit the ground as plasma fire from its comrade chopped the air above her. She rolled and brought up her weapon as energy bolts clipped foliage. Experience told her the Invader tactic would be to rush her, firing, counting on blurring speed and sudden response to cow her into cover rather than fighting back.

  Sandy put her finger on the trigger pad and didn’t let go, pouring a stream of blasterfire that would expend most of its energy harmlessly detonating saplings. But some would get through. It had to.

  The warning light blinked on the blastrifle and Sandy released the trigger. She got up slowly with the empty weapon still aimed. The Invader sprawled a few body-lengths away with red-hot dimples sliced into its torso.

  Sandy lowered the rifle and blew out a breath, deflating as fear and worry left her. Her voice sounded gravelly as she called out, “Cynn?”

  “Sandy, stop.”

  Sandy turned and was surprised to see her twin standing a couple meters away. Her hands inexpertly aimed the plasma rifle she had picked off the first Invader Sandy had killed.

  “Cynn, what the hell are you doing? Drop that thing!”

  “Sandy, listen to me...”

  “—could be swarming with their nannites!”

  “Sandy, shut up!”

  Cynthia’s bark startled Sandy, then gave birth to a surge of rage. “What the—hey, fuck is wrong with you? Do you know how many sweeps I dodged looking for you?”

  “You were always trying to protect me, weren’t you?” Cynthia said, her voice growing husky with anger and a dark light swirling in her eyes. Her lips twitched with a smile that bespoke some sort of triumph. “Well, I didn’t ask for your protection, Sandy. I don’t need it. Not anymore.”

  Sandy opened her mouth to snarl something in retort, but the words froze in her throat. She looked at the plasma rifle held in her twin’s hands. Her eyes wandered over the dead Invaders. They had been ahead and behind her.

  Almost as if they...

  Sandy felt something break, an avalanche inside her that crashed through her chest into her extremities. Her legs went watery. Her vision blurred as horror and disbelief warred behind her eyes. She blinked and felt streams of moisture slide across her cheeks.

  Sandy looked into her sister’s eyes and saw her worst nightmare staring back.

  “Cynthia, what have you done?”

  “I tried to tell you,” Cynthia replied, her hands tightening on the plasma weapon. “It’s the only way, the best way. You have to believe. We’ll be safe with them.”

  “No!”

  Sandy brought the blastrifle to her shoulder. Cynthia flinched away, her hands fumbling over the strange weapon. Sandy would have gotten off a shot, maybe killed her. The blaster charge warning light mocked her. She wasn’t sure she could h
ave pulled the trigger. Her hand shook on the pistol grip.

  “Sandy, please,” Cynthia said, voice strengthening as she realized her twin was no threat. “Think about what you’re doing. Aren’t you tired of it all? Aren’t you tired of the killing and the filth and the fear? I am. We’ll be safe with them, Sandy. I promise.”

  “Oh, Cynn...” Sandy almost chuckled through a cascade of tears. The blastrifle lowered, an unbearable weight dragging on her arms. “You promise? They promise?” Sandy shook her head. “They’ll harvest you like all the rest. And when they’re done using you up, they’ll kill you, Cynthia. Like they did mom and dad and grandpa.”

  “No. Everybody says that, but they don’t know them. You don’t know them!”

  “They’re monsters, Cynthia.”

  “No! They’re strong and they’re beautiful, Sandy! And they’re going to win.”

  Sandy bit her lip as she looked down and shook her head. Through tears, she saw a vision of a young Cynthia in a bright pink holiday dress, twirling amongst a golden-brown sea of razor-grass under a summer sun while Sandy stood by her father, clapping to an imagined song. Cynthia the Pretty.

  Sandy sucked in a shuddering breath and realized the girl who had been her sister had been left behind in those summery days of long ago. That girl had not survived.

  She dropped the expended blastrifle, turned, and began to walk away. She expected the banshee’s wail of plasma fire at her back. She didn’t care. She was beyond feeling that or anything else.

  “Sandy, please.” Cynthia’s voice sounded like that of a stranger. “Sandy, stop. Stop now. I’ll shoot!”

  “You go ahead and do that.” Sandy called over her shoulder as she drifted into the trees. “It won’t matter. You’ve killed me already.”

  VORSH CROUCHED IN A ravine, hidden amongst the gnarled roots of a partially uprooted tree. Night felt good around him, the shadowy embrace bringing him back to himself. The black caves of home felt suddenly near and Vorsh could stick his head up again.