Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  His arm itched, a burning across the edges of the gash that persisted despite his attentions. He had scavenged bandages and a bottle of first aid bio-sealant off a slain partisan medic. But the wound required more than just his crude ministrations. He had to get to someone who knew what they were doing.

  He had to get out of here.

  Something quivered in Vorsh’s core. He clenched his fangs and forced the sensation down. He hated it, hated the feeling more than he had ever hated any being or thing. A voice gibbered at him from his depths, laughing and mocking. Vorsh reached inward, mental hands fumbling in the dark for a throat, coming up empty.

  There had been no choice, Vorsh insisted to himself. To stay with the others meant a wasted, useless end. The company had collapsed and the Korvans were swarming. No sense in resisting the inevitable. Heroic stands were a fool’s dream.

  Vorsh was no fool. He was pragmatic. He was a survivor. Cole, the others, they could all die their martyrs’ deaths. Vorsh wasn’t finished with the Universe quite yet.

  Still, the knife-edged chuckle persisted in Vorsh’s weary brain.

  Vorsh climbed from the ravine and slipped into the woods. The glare of the Station was his landmark. Avoid that fiery beacon. That way was thick with Korvans. Vorsh’s course carried him northeast, across the lonely, smoldering wake of the battle, traveled by Collaborator supply columns, scattered Korvan sweeps, and the lost.

  Plasma and blaster fire screamed in the forest ahead. Vorsh dropped into the razor grass and waited, pulse shuddering in his chest. Silence followed, pierced by the distant shriek and thud of fighting to the northeast and south. Voices spoke, young women’s voices. Something familiar about them, the emotions, the faint scent. Vorsh rose and crept closer.

  He saw the sisters facing each other and arguing over aimed weapons. He heard their words and felt rage course up through him, white hot and welcome. The world crystallized around him. The old Vorsh howled in pleasure, stomping out the hated mocking laughter.

  Then Sandy dropped her weapon, shaking with ridiculous human soba. Her misery and cowardice sickened him. The stink of her tears was salty. He realized he hadn’t picked up a rifle himself, berated himself for the stupidity. Cynthia took aim at Sandy as she turned and trudged away. Then more cowardice, the astounding human frailty! Cynthia couldn’t finish her treachery, wouldn’t fire on her twin. Sandy vanished into the dark and Cynthia lowered the bulky Korvan plasma rifle.

  Cynthia glanced about, was obviously at a loss what to do next. Her eyes passed over her dead Korvan conspirators. She was lost without her benefactors to guide. She seemed to arrive at a decision and moved west.

  Vorsh let her pass and followed. His skin tingled, grew chilly. His wound was forgotten. His whole body shook with excitement. He slipped in behind Cynthia, only meters away, and resisted the urge to leap. She moved with an uncertain gait. He watched her legs, her shuffling feet. His eyes traced the lines of her body up to her hair. He took a breath, could smell its faint musk, almost perfumed.

  Cynthia spun.

  Vorsh smacked the rifle from her with the palm of his good hand. She gasped, took a step back. The air ripened with the stink of her terror. Her eyes narrowed with recognition.

  “Vorsh—”

  He backhanded her. Cynthia’s face jerked away, trailing a streamer of red. She fell into the grass. Vorsh moved over her. She thrashed out, a booted foot catching him in the knee. He buckled, staggered for balance, and she starting to scramble away. He lurched forward, caught a fist full of auburn hair and dragged her back to him. She let out a cry of outrage and turned in his grip, fingernails tearing for his face. Vorsh threw her face-first into the narrow trunk of a young tree. She dropped and Vorsh moved over her again.

  Cynthia kicked. This time Vorsh sidestepped and brought his foot slamming into her kidneys. She arched her back and grunted. Vorsh licked his lips as he knelt over her legs. He slid his dagger free, the bone handle itching against his skin.

  Cynthia had another burst of energy, fingernails flailing. She tore at the bandages on his left arm. He hissed and grabbed the offending hand in his free, injured one. Pain lanced up his forearm at the effort. He pinned her other hand with his right knee and the left one he ground into her inner thigh, into the pressure point.

  “Vorsh, please,” she gasped. “Stop! You don’t understand!”

  “You should have shot your sister. At least then I might have respected you.”

  Cynthia began screaming. That was no good, would bring Korvans for certain.

  “Pity,” Vorsh said, raising the dagger. “I never seem to have the time to enjoy this, anymore.”

  CROZIER STAGGERED INTO the Station command chamber, his knee throbbing with each step. The corridors behind him echoed with shouts and movement. The word was spreading. Time to leave. Live to fight another day.

  “All right, everyone out,” Crozier said, barely able to get his voice over a croak.

  Janotski and the girls at the workstations stared at him for a moment. He figured he must look like a nightmare and the expression twisting the face of one of the girls confirmed it.

  “Go on!” Crozier waved his hand, feeling suddenly irritated. He was tired of people looking to him. “You’ve only got a few minutes. The last hovertrucks are leaving!”

  The girls glanced at each other and scurried from the chamber, one of them whispering a goodbye to Crozier. Jantoski watched them with a curious smile creasing his features. Crozier stepped over to one of the abandoned workstations and touched the controls. Beside him, Janotski took out and lit a cigarette.

  “Computer,” Crozier said to the AI, “transmit on open tactical network the final evacuation codes. Then send to our heavy artillery section the withdrawal sequence fire missions. With those missions, include the order to blow their weapons in place and get their personnel out.”

  “Your instructions are being carried out, Major Crozier,” the AI replied in its not quite cheerful voice. “Do you have any other orders for me?”

  “Yes.” Crozier glanced at Janotski, who stared into the holograms with eyes gone glassy. “Activate self-destruct protocols on my authority. I want full fusion core meltdown. Program a ninety-minute delay, or set to detonate the instant a Korvan sets foot in this installation. And disable all override authorities. This order is final.”

  “Yes, Major Crozier.”

  That was that. No reversing it. Crozier glanced around the chamber. This cold blastisteel fashioned into the living rock had been home for ten months. Something in him recoiled at the idea of abandoning it. One more thing the Korvans had taken from him. He looked at Janotski. The older man was still staring at the screen.

  “Come on, Hep,” Crozier said. “I’ll help you.”

  “I think I’ll stick around a little while,” Janotski said, nearly in a whisper. “Watch the fireworks.”

  Crozier blew out a long breath, had been expecting something like this. “We don’t have time for this. That kind of hero-martyr bullshit isn’t helping anyone.”

  “I’m not much help to anyone,” he replied, voice still soft. “What are going to do, Major? Carry me through the whole war?”

  “We are not doing this.” Crozier’s frustration burned behind his eyes. He blinked and found anger rising. “I am not leaving anyone else behind, dammit!”

  “It’s not about you!” Janotski barked, turning around in his seat. His eyes glittered. He swallowed and lowered his voice to its earlier pitch. “This way, at least, an old cripple can have a man’s death.”

  Crozier backed away a step, eyes stinging with moisture. He wanted to scream or hit the man. But Janotksi’s expression was set like weathered stone.

  “Go on. Be a good lad. It’s all gonna be all right.” Janotski stiffened in his seat and gave Crozier a parade ground salute. His voice didn’t shake. “Godspeed, Major. And thank you.”

  More damned heroics. God, how Crozier was sick of heroes. He just wanted...oh, what the hell. Crozier straight
ened to attention and returned the salute.

  It was the best he could do. He could no longer find his voice to speak.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Zarven slumped in the former worm trench, too tired to care about the gouge across his left leg. Churvak kneeled beside him, had dragged him the last few meters. One of his bodyguards began stripping away chewed armor plate and shredded bodysuit. Hands fumbled with first aid gear. Not much blood now and the femur was broken cleanly. Torn muscle, mainly.

  Zarven didn’t care.

  He’d been hit seconds into the first push, a splintering blow from a worm heavy-caliber slug. Considering the shrapnel-torn Commandos piled in the trench around him, he should probably be thankful he hadn’t made the top with the initial rush. But he’d spent two hours stranded in the no-man’s land beneath the worm lines while holdouts to the left and right raked the open ground, chewing injured and dead Korvans into pulp. He’d then endured a brief but furious artillery barrage, clutching a corpse close to shield him from the sleet of fragments.

  It had only been five minutes since the Commandos finally secured the trench line and were able to send parties down to recover the wounded. Zarven was only one of three they had found alive.

  Korvan plasma fire dueled with scattered worm blaster bolts and muzzle flashes, a disembodied snarl in the thick, grayish haze. Commandos scrambled back and forth in the trench, silent, specter-like shapes. The air felt heavy, caustic, and sooty, like the world had been set ablaze.

  Zarven brought up a tactical schematic from his AI and considered the mixed, uneven line of Korvans now perched near the crest of the hill. The numbers stared back at him, piercing with their denouncement. He cast the figures from his skull and looked at the bodyguard working on his leg. She was not gentle. Zarven welcomed the pain, preferring it to the taste of failure.

  “We’ve got movement to the southeast, just behind the crest,” Tetzrak said, her tones tight with frustration across the Awareness. “They’re consolidating for another rush.”

  “They’re gone, Tetzrak,” Zarven replied softly.

  “We’re taking fire, my Haust.”

  “From stragglers and a few wounded left behind. The worm main body is pulling out.”

  “Then we must pursue.”

  Zarven blew out a sigh. Tetzrak didn’t get it yet, or wouldn’t accept it. An unsurprising Korvan response. Failure was not in their nature. But it was real.

  A blast like the world being rent apart filled the sky. Needles of hot agony pierced Zarven’s skull, tore a grunt of pain free of his chest. White noise shrieked through the Awareness, a blinding wave of electronic snow. Zarven clenched his eyes shut and hunched low. Churvak threw himself down, hollering something unheard over the thunder tearing the ground and air. A rush of hot air and debris swept over the trenches, showering the Korvans in stirred ash and embers. The world went black for a few endless seconds.

  The rumble went on but the initial crash subsided. Zarven’s brain quivered with the disruption. The agony of his mauled leg was abruptly more pronounced and he felt his senses deadened, felt very alone. The voices of his fellow Korvans and the comfort of the Awareness seemed faint, as if felt from a great distance.

  The Universe had been stunned into ringing silence.

  Churvak struggled to his feet. He put a hand on Zarven’s shoulder and said aloud in a soft voice, “Stay down.”

  Zarven nodded but couldn’t force the words in his mind across the Awareness. His AI was slow to respond and holograms flitted like shards of ghost imagery behind his retinas. He blinked several times, trying to force focus with physical effort.

  “Something got through!” Churvak’s voice went hoarse with excitement. “We blew the worm Station!”

  The Awareness swept back through Zarven in a fearsome rush, nearly overwhelming his battered mind. He saw the view from the trench line through Churvak’s eyes. Unnecessary. Zarven clearly recognized the worms’ end move.

  A column of red-black smoke roiled into the sky while smaller tendrils of smoke and ash that were assuredly enormous when viewed up close spat off at odd angles. The mountain that had contained the Station could no longer be seen but had obviously absorbed the main force of the thermonuclear explosion. Much of the mass that had been part of its peak was raining across a kilometer of landscape, starting fires that would kick up into an inferno before long.

  “We didn’t get through,” Zarven said to Churvak, “The worms blew the fusion reactor, themselves.”

  Zarven felt Churvak’s elation fade. Confusion replaced it. He kneeled in the trench. His voice came across the Awareness now.

  “What does it mean?”

  Zarven spat into the dirt of the trench. “It means the battle is over.”

  BOOK V

  WINTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Winter winds moaned through the ice-cloaked peaks of the Coreal Mountains and whirled hip deep snow into eddies that glittered in the late afternoon sunlight. The cold of a Coreal winter was as feared among the partisans as plasma blasts, bringing slow death and frostbite.

  Sandy shivered despite the layer of rahillabuy hides worn over battered armor and synthe-leathers. She didn’t necessarily mind the cold, nor did she lament the wind’s howl, though it had been known to drive the occasional person a little mad. She welcomed the distraction. Perched amongst rocks and snow, overlooking the narrow gap that connected the southern plains of Freebourne with the southeast Coreals, Sandy felt almost alone. Alone was bad. Alone meant nothing to prevent her from thinking.

  Anything that held the nightmares of memory at bay was a good thing.

  Sandy felt a nudge at her boot from the partisan crouched slightly behind her, watching the pass through digital binoculars. She nodded in response and lowered her battle helm visor. A quick command dialed up its magnification and brought the rolling terrain below springing into focus.

  A string of hunched shapes trudged through the gap. Clad in hide cloaks and dragging sleds weighted down with supplies, the procession had the appearance of a refugee column seeking the shelter of the mountains from the shredding winds of the plain.

  Sandy zoomed in on one of the bulging, blanket-covered sleds and made out the hard angles of a metallic case. As she panned across the column, a gust of wind lifted the tattered flaps of a refugee’s cloak, exposing a flash of blastisteel plate.

  Refugee column, indeed. Sandy put the blastrifle to her shoulder and wiggled the loose molar with her tongue. Around her, she sensed a ripple of movement as the partisan platoon readied their weapons. She blinked a command to her helm and a firing dot drew itself across the leader of the column. Her finger poised over the firing pad. She listened to the wind and the pounding of her pulse.

  The leader of the column reached a point in the gap strewn with sandstone boulders draped in icicles. He halted and glanced around. Sandy’s heart raced as he turned and gestured for the rest of the column to stop.

  “What’s happening?” asked the partisan behind Sandy.

  “Shut up, fool.”

  The leader drew back the hide folds of his hood to reveal an unshaven, scarred face that scanned the heights surrounding the gap. He paused and his gaze seemed to settle directly on Sandy. His features wrinkled in what might be a smile. Sandy’s grip on her weapon tightened and the firing dot burned red on his chest.

  The man reached slowly into a pocket and pulled out a light wand. He held it straight up, careful so all could see it was not a weapon, and began flashing it. Sandy watched the pattern until she recognized the code. She blew out a breath and took her finger away from the trigger pad.

  The right sequence given at the right location. These newcomers weren’t refugees, but nor were they unexpected.

  Sandy got to her feet and gave a hand signal. A line of partisans rose from the boulders and frozen undergrowth. As they moved out of their positions, Sandy thought about what the new arrivals meant.

  And shuddered.

  CROZIE
R TOOK A SIP of thin, bitter coffee and grimaced. Such luxuries had become scarce and the weak fluid burning across his palate was about the best the Movement quartermaster could manage. Well, it’s warm.

  He’d set up his command post in the sturdy remnants of what may have been some kind of city hall. Clear plastic had been taped across smashed out windows and doors. It flapped when the wind blew hard, which was all the time. The floors had been swept clear of rubble and space heaters made the rooms relatively warm. It wasn’t the Station, of course. He only realized how luxurious that had been now.

  Crozier looked out through the haze of a fresh snowfall into the hollow below. The crumbling ghost town that served as base camp for a decent fraction of the Movement’s now dispersed strength had been a human mining settlement perhaps sixty years ago. When Lurinari heavy metal and coal firms found their interests drawn to wealthier veins in the northeast Coreals and the Karahks, the little camp withered. It had no name anyone could remember; a good thing as it meant the town wouldn’t show up on maps the Korvans may have pirated from Lurinari planetary databases.

  “Gentlemen.” Crozier winced through a last sip of coffee and turned to regard the newcomers. “You’ve come a long way.”

  There were two of them, clad in smart-fiber fatigues of the same issue as Crozier, though nowhere nearly as tattered. The taller of the two, a broad, scarred man with the stance of a veteran took a step forward. Patches of first-aid bio-sealant stood out across his ears and eyebrows, treatment for frostbite.

  “Came through the Korvan siege lines,” he said with a tone of challenge. “And all the way across the south plains. I left a third of my people out there. Frozen.”

  Crozier nodded. He held out his hand. “Major Devin Crozier.”

  The man regarded him for an uneasy moment before accepting. “Captain Orin Banbridge, A Company, Second Battalion, Sothran Rangers.” Banbridge turned and gestured at his companion. “And this fellow is the reason we are here. Mr. Klein?”