Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  “Working their way around behind us,” Vorsh replied. He glanced down the quiet street they’d come from. Instinct pressed him closer to the wall. The motion brought him into contact with Sandy. He quivered inside.

  Sandy didn’t seem to notice as she reached for the last grenade dangling from her belt. She waved it so Sten and the others across the way could see. The gaunt human nodded understanding and tensed in preparation.

  “When I throw this, you go, Vorsh.” She looked back at him. She was nearly close enough for him to taste her breath. “Ready?”

  Vorsh nodded.

  She twisted the top of the egg-shaped fragmentation model to arm it, counted three seconds, and threw. The explosion a second later was shattering in the tight space.

  Vorsh lurched across the alley, plasma fire keening around him. He was aware of the rush of hot air and the crackle of shrapnel glancing off concrete and brick. He stumbled and fell into the dark of the other side of the alley. Partisan hands scrambled over his back and pulled him to his feet before he was fully aware he’d made it to safety. He turned to look the way he’d come.

  A tracery of cyan flame clawed the alley. Sandy was waving from the other side, screaming to be heard over the banshee’s wail.

  “We can’t!” Sten shouted in reply. “I won’t leave you!”

  Vorsh stepped back to the edge of the alley, his pulse slamming up into his neck. Sten and another partisan blocked his way. A hand gripped his shoulder, some fool trying to drag him away. He shrugged it off.

  You can’t...

  “You’re not leaving me! We’re splitting up! I’ll catch up by a different route!”

  “But—”

  “No argument! Go, damn you!”

  Sandy turned and sprinted into the shadows of the street behind her. The glare of plasma blasts swallowed her in a moment.

  Vorsh pressed against the Sten’s back, his fangs bared. No...

  Sten’s features twisted. He turned and forced his way by Vorsh. The other partisans needed no encouragement, were already sprinting down the street.

  “Let’s go, Shmali!” the last partisan snarled as he left the edge of the alley.

  No, you don’t, Sandy...no, we’re not done yet...

  The gunfire in the alley tapered off, the Korvans by now taking note of the absence of return fire. Vorsh tightened at the alley’s edge. He switched his weapon to his left hand and took a long breath. There was no time. He could see no sign of Sandy now. No telling how far she had gotten.

  Vorsh hurtled into the alleyway at a near crouch. The low stance meant the Korvans, expecting the center of their target to be higher, would need a fraction of a second to correct their aim.

  The first Korvan stood only five meters away. Vorsh’s senses slowed, picked out surprising detail, the shoddy quality of his target’s gear and the dumb-animal look in the Living Dead slave’s eyes. His blaster bolt punched that look and most of the Minrohaust’s face away.

  Vorsh reached the sanctuary of the opposite side and spun around, kneeling. Two more Korvans came up, tearing the alley with a stream of flechettes and energy bolts. Vorsh put a blast into one’s crotch. The Korvan dropped, hands clawing at the smoke boiling from its inner thighs but making no sound—another damned slave.

  The third Korvan flinched back, flailing the air with its plasma rifle to cover its retreat. Shadows flitted through the alley behind it. Its comrades were coming up. Time to leave.

  Vorsh turned and sprinted down the street, the cracked, uneven pavement flanked by dark and usually abandoned shops. The Korvans ripped the alley behind him. They’d give him only seconds. He turned down one street, then dodged down another. His breath tore in his lungs. Snow stung against his face.

  He reached a corner and a main street he recognized and halted for a few seconds, waiting for his strength to recover. The street curved down along the bank of the Estrek. It was the long way—the reason the partisans had avoided it—but should take him around the Korvans.

  Surely, Sandy would think the same thing.

  Vorsh jogged in bursts, building to building, shadow to shadow. He paused for sounds or hints of movement. The air had stilled somewhat, no longer full of the crash of explosions from the rail yards and warehouses. The low rumble of fires and the crackle of Crozier’s diversion in the south faintly charged the night air.

  He couldn’t have lost her. He could still taste her fear, her excitement. He could still smell her perspiration and that underlying musk. Her sister had possessed that scent, too. His legs shook beneath him and he knew the cause was not fatigue. She had to be near. She had to be—

  There...

  Vorsh froze and watched a lithe figure dart from the chassis of an abandoned hovercar to the side of a building. His skin went slick and cold. He crossed the street to the side along which she prowled. The dense snow dulled the sound of his feet. He waited. When she moved, so did he. But as she covered ground in brief, cautious spurts, he moved twice the space in reckless bursts. Closer now. Closer.

  The street bent ahead, tracing along the bank of the river. Bridges to the east and west burned spitefully, one fully collapsed into the water, the other missing an entire section.

  Sandy turned on a side street rather than follow along the open space beside the Estrek. Vorsh shadowed her, closed the gap. She paused at an intersection and looked both ways. Vorsh halted behind a building only twenty meters behind her. He listened to her hoarse breathing. Her skin gleamed with sweat in the faint red glow of the fires to the west. She was shaking.

  Her human woman stink filled Vorsh as he watched her. He trembled, felt an unbearable heat filling his legs, his thighs, his crotch. He could no longer fight the pain and the need. His vision glowed with a crimson hue. He tasted the coppery tang of blood and realized he had gnawed into his lip.

  Sandy drew in a sharp breath and launched across the intersection. Vorsh swept after her. She reached the opposite side and ducked into the doorway of shop. She turned, heaving for breath. She looked up and saw Vorsh the moment before he was upon her. Her eyes began to widen with shock and recognition.

  Vorsh swung his blastrifle in a tight arch. The butt plate cracked against the point of Sandy’s jaw with an impact that jarred through his wrists. She slapped back against the brick of the shop front. Her eyes glazed over into unconsciousness. She began to sag.

  Vorsh caught the front of her battle armor with his free hand and draped her against him. He kicked the front door of the store. Broken metal pinged. A second blow was required to jar it open.

  Vorsh let out a long sigh that rattled in his chest with a mixture of pleasure and relief. Sandy felt limp and helpless in his arms as he dragged her into the building.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Zarven stood head and shoulders out of the turret of an Artus-class light hovertank. Snow and wind slashed his face as he scanned the countryside. A convoy of hover vehicles, tanks, battle-cars, and trucks trailed behind him, the whine of their anti-gravity drives filling the air.

  The ground rose into a gentle ridge ahead. The highway narrowed as it curved uphill into a darkened mass of structures that had to be the hamlet on Zarven’s holographic maps labeled Good Days—notorious for its brothels, contraband cyberware dealers, and other discouraged pleasures. The recent transfer of so much of its Korvan clientele to the south had brought a miniature recession to the settlement. But Zarven didn’t think that was the reason he was seeing so little light from the buildings.

  “If they plan to stall us, this will be the spot to do it,” Zarven announced. He could sense the hovertank driver bringing up the targeting software of the vehicle’s main gun. She left control of the cupola mounted plasma blaster to Zarven’s discretion.

  Hovertanks came up to flank Zarven, the anti-grav fields of their engines thrumming with what he imagined as eagerness. The pair pulled slightly ahead and began to swing wide, stubby main guns tracking on the settlement. Behind, the rest of the procession slowed, battle-cars m
oving into formation to protect the hovertrucks.

  Zarven’s driver slowed to allow the vehicle’s sensor suite to analyze their surroundings. The ridge rose to the south and left, forest thickening along its spine. To the north, the hill dropped into a narrow gully and a frozen creek. Beyond that spread more forest and rocks. Good Days sat astride the easiest gap through the band of low hills separating the rolling fields occupied by Ranzac and the flats containing Mondanberg.

  The edge of the village exploded in jets of fire and screams of hyper-velocity rockets. The hovertank to port flashed white, for an instant silhouetted in the heart of a ravening cyan globe. The blast slammed Zarven back in the cupola, the blastisteel ring biting into his lower back. A wave of searing air rushed over him with the clatter of shreds of armor and bits of Korvan bouncing off his tank’s hull.

  Then the world went black. Zarven thought at first he’d passed out. But the Awareness snarled through him and the tank shuddered beneath him. He shook himself and realized from the netherworld stillness, the lack of detail around him, and the electric hum of the air that the Fanrohaust commanding the hovertank had raised her shields.

  “Probably safer in the turret, my Haust,” the hovertanker said. Her harmonic trembled with shock at the suddenness of her comrade’s demise, but she seemed veteran enough to hold her calm.

  Zarven nodded mentally and lowered himself into the turret, a tight band of pain across his back pinching with the movement. He wondered if he’d be pissing blood. He noticed that the tank had ground to a halt.

  “Fucking worm bastards!” Tetzrak snarled. “We’re coming, HaustColonel! I’m bringing up the battle-cars.”

  “We should pull back, my Haust.” The hovertank shook and Zarven could feel it reversing. “Provide fire support for the infantry and pick this place to pieces at long range.”

  Zarven blinked away pain. Tactical displays solidified behind his eyes. The fury of worm firepower lessened as the hovertanks dropped back, the worms allowing them to disengage. Funny, that. Not at all what Zarven had come to expect.

  Tan-Ezatz cried for help again. He saw her, trapped in a darkened office, worms closing on her from all sides.

  “No...”

  “We’ll dismount the Commandos behind the battle-cars and push—”

  “No! We’re going through now!” Zarven felt dread pass through the Awareness at his order. “The HaustMarshal is running out of time. We can’t waste it picking through this shit hole.” Zarven climbed back into the cupola, staggering once in agony but managing to hoist himself through. “We’re going to punch through.”

  The commander of Zarven’s hovertank hesitated for a moment, her fear a cold throb across the Awareness. But her fear that this Omniptorate monster would have her purged was greater. The hovertank shuddered again and began to edge forward.

  Zarven rang his fist off the side of the cupola. “Go! Punch through!”

  The hovertank commander’s anger surged over her anxiety. Deflectors dropped like a featureless curtain and the hovertank lurched forward. The main gun belched a jet of plasma and a cluster of buildings at the edge Good Days collapsed into a ball of flame. The roar of the discharge tingled in Zarven’s bones.

  Worm fire crackled in reply, orange sparks of tracer and screaming white jolts of blaster fire. The hovertank hurtled into the storm, its hull ringing with hits and ricochets. The other surviving hovertank fell into line behind, ravaging the village with its primary armament. Battle-cars skimmed along their flanks, streams of chain lightning from their plasma cannon raking the fires into an inferno.

  A worm missile described a wispy arch through the snow. Zarven clearly made out the details of the rocket’s conical warhead before it struck the sloped bow of the hovertank with a jarring clang. The explosion that should have smeared him across the landscape didn’t follow. The projectile glanced off the hull without bursting, its passage puffing the air beside him. It bounced across the hillside, the rocket still driving it in whirling patterns.

  They reached the edge of Good Days, the bow of the hovertank plowing through wreckage strewn across the highway. A volley of small arms fire rippled across the tank’s armor. Blazes stirred by its passing swirled into ember curtains to either side.

  Zarven’s AI picked out the heavy rocket team that had plagued him, two worms scurrying to load a fresh two-round clip into their bipod-mounted weapon. They crouched in an unfinished storefront, close enough that their next hit could not fail to leave Zarven’s tank a flaming wreck blocking the highway.

  Hunching down behind the cupola plasma blaster, Zarven flailed the roadside with cyan. He caught a freeze frame image of the worms flying away from their weapon before a plasma bolt touched ready ordnance and shattered the unfinished building in a catastrophic secondary explosion.

  The shockwave jarred Zarven’s driver enough that she swerved to port. The skirt of the hovertank brushed what looked to be a one-story roadhouse. The building came apart in a cloud of shattered concrete and dust. Figures scurried from the collapse.

  Zarven didn’t take time to worry over whether they were Collaborators or guerillas. An arching stream of energy bolts sawed them into spinning, burning pieces.

  A bullet screamed off the cupola, plucking Zarven’s shoulder armor on its way. He pounded on the turret’s side, manic release this time. Good Days collapsed into a churning cataclysm in his wake.

  Somewhere, Tan-Ezatz hollered for help.

  TAN-EZTAZ STEPPED FROM her office into the silent hallway. Emergency lamps cast the corridor in a reddish light. Faintly, she could hear the chatter of a firefight in the lower levels. The chaos and dismay across the Awareness was much louder.

  The headquarters company officers felt confident they’d contained the break-in, but their uncertainties couldn’t be hidden from Tan-Ezatz. With the security and surveillance systems disabled by damage very little could be said for certain.

  Tan-Ezatz moved down the corridor, pressed close to the wall with the flechette rifle at her shoulder. Her strides felt light and her body was warm. Flushed with adrenaline and the synthetic stimulates of her implants, she shivered with a giddiness that seemed like sudden youth.

  A handful of her staff officers had armed themselves and were making their way to her, but they were being cautious and had a floor to pick through to get to her. Safety meant moving to them.

  Tan-Ezatz reached a T-section in the hallway. Memory told her a left turn would take her to the nearest stairwell. Her heart slammed. The giddiness faded into chill clarity. She remembered how it was to be surrounded by the noise of the Awareness, but to feel alone, nonetheless.

  She swept into the next corridor, checking both directions in smooth motions. Empty, crimson-lit hall greeted her. She paused to pull in a relieved breath and resumed her course. The gray steel of the emergency stairwell door lay at the end of the corridor. Her strides grew in length, grew hasty.

  The aluminum airshaft tracing the ceiling gave a hollow boom. Tan-Ezatz dropped into a crouch and turned, rifle aimed up. Her AI calculated furiously, targeting icons lighting across her vision. The air stilled. Her heightened senses caught the scrape of something in the shaft and a whispered curse. The AI triangulated and the targeting icons converged on a pair of faint, highlighted figures.

  Tan-Ezatz pulled the trigger and held it down, spraying the short length of shaft with a burst that screamed like a high-power saw. Dense, razor-edged needles punched through the thin metal, freckling it with hundreds of glittering dimples. The flechettes continued to rattle through the shaft with a ringing crash, sawing through meat over and over again.

  The flechette rifle clicked empty and the expended clip dropped free. Tan-Ezatz reached for a reload from the bandoleer she’d flung over her shoulder before leaving her office. She slapped the fresh clip into the well and felt a gentle whir as the weapon cycled in ready ammo. A dozen trickles of bright red seeped through holes in the aluminum to patter on the corridor floor.

  The sta
irwell door flung open. Tan-Ezatz turned, expecting to see one of her staff officers but finding, instead, a ragged and feral figure in worm battle plate. The worm’s unshaven face twisted in animal fury as its blastrfile came up.

  Tan-Ezatz’s reflexes were better. She half-turned and fired the flechette rifle one-handed. The burst had little chance of piercing blastisteel but raked across the worm’s unprotected inner thigh where the needles sliced through arteries and pulped bone. The worm collapsed back into the stairwell with a shrill scream, jets of blood spattering patterns across the walls.

  The emergency door slammed shut. An instant later it cracked open again, wide enough for a worm hand clutching an egg-shaped fragmentation grenade to appear. Tan-Ezatz had foreseen the move and fired into the space, slashing the hand to ribbons. The grenade dropped back into the stairwell. She turned away, hearing a hoarse shout.

  The hallway flashed red and jerked out of proportion around Tan-Ezatz. Something crashed into her from behind, her right leg disintegrating into a thousand lances of agony. The explosion seemed to last forever.

  The corridor stilled. The air reeked of ozone, magnesium, and the shit stink of voided bowels. The emergency door hung open on one set of hinges and smoke boiled through.

  Tan-Ezatz tried to move. Her leg drove a grunt of pain from her throat. She fought to keep control. Her AI blinked injury status to her. Her femur was broken and the soft tissue damage was widespread. Her implants had clamped down severed arteries. She wouldn’t bleed out. Not yet.

  A supreme effort got Tan-Ezatz up on her good leg. She hissed in agony at the dead weight of her maimed limb. She had to get back to Kavelton. Together, they might be able to hold off any others.

  A panel of aluminum dropped from the chewed airshaft. Tan-Ezatz brought her rifle up, pain receding behind adrenaline. A body fell through and landed with a meaty thud. The leg of a second dead worm dangled free, blood running off the toe of the boot to pool on the floor.

  Tan-Ezatz lowered her weapon. She let a chuckle escape that almost became a sob.