Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  Such ridiculous dwellings they prefer, Tan-Ezatz thought as her car slid through the main gateway of the mansion. A single, well-placed heavy plasma cannon shot would bring most of that toppling down.

  A line of worms in a dizzying variety of clothing and color spread in front of the estate. Near the entrance, Kavanaugh stood in what Tan-Ezatz was certain was an expensive silver-gray suit with his terrified-obedient smile locked tightly in place. Beside him, his wife, a petite, sickly-looking worm, made no effort to appear civil, was perhaps too frightened to do so.

  Tan-Ezatz waited while squads of her headquarters guard spilled from the battle-cars to secure the area, stirring Kavanuagh’s small legion of servants and subordinates into cowering disorder. At a signal from the guard Senior Fanrohaust, she and Kavelton stepped from the hovercar.

  The air was thick with the sweat-urine stink of worm fear and most of the creatures lacked the mettle to meet Tan-Ezatz’s gaze as she strode across the yard. Her eyes settled on Kavanaugh’s mate again, saw something flash through the face and had to revise her assessment. The worm was not terrified. She was enraged.

  Kavanaugh extended his hand in an archaic handshake that Tan-Ezatz accepted. The worm’s skin felt warm, moist and soft rolled around hers. Her disgust rippled openly through the Awareness. She looked into his face, saw the loose skin around the darting, blue eyes, saw the fat settling limply about his jaw. He was tall, taller than she and broader with shoulders that had possibly once held strength, been imposing.

  “Good morning, Haust Tan-Ezatz,” Kavanaugh said, the faintest hint of stale alcohol on his breath.

  He said something else, but Tan-Ezatz ignored him, sampling, instead the scent of his intimidation, the stoop of his posture and the downward turn of his gaze. Boosted senses collected the data, her AI processed it, and her intuition read it as the submission it was. But no matter how she stretched out her mind, concentrated on the tremor at the heart of his voice, strained to feel his presence, Kavanaugh was not there.

  What are you thinking, worm? What is in that flabby skull? You fear me, yes? Would you plot against me? Is there strength behind those coward eyes? Is there hate? Do you want to kill me? Frustration and anger sizzled low in Tan-Ezatz’s gut. And there was something else, something stirring the cauldron with cold strokes. Fear. Fear that a being so inferior could hold such power, such secrets from her.

  The secrets of its soul.

  We must harvest or destroy them all, eventually.

  The color left Kavanaugh’s face, the fat folds tightening in his neck, about his eyes. “Haust, I’m...I’m sorry...did I say something?”

  “HaustMarshal?” Kavelton’s voice whispered through the Awareness, was tinged with concern. “Something vexes you?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. She focused on Kavanaugh, annoyed that her contempt for his kind had become so obvious. She allowed her face to pull itself into a smile, awkward, as it was an unpracticed gesture. Clearing her throat, Tan-Ezatz spoke aloud in a voice harsh and hoarse from lack of use. “No, I am well. Thank you, Governor.”

  Facial muscles loosened, though Tan-Ezatz could still hear the thunder of Kavanaugh’s pulse. He swallowed once, glanced at his wife. “You’re welcome. Please, allow me to invite you into our home.”

  “Of course,” Tan-Ezatz replied. She gave a nod and Kavanaugh led her up the stairs to solid wood double doors that a pair of servants parted for them. Behind her, Kavelton made what the worms referred to as “small talk”—an amusing term, as all worm chatter was small.

  “HaustMarshal.” The unexpected words burst across the Awareness with the impetuousness she’d come to expect from the speaker. “I must report.”

  “Zarven. Can’t it wait?”

  “There has been an attack.” Zarven’s words pressed in on her mind. She felt a headache coming. “I’m sure you sensed it.”

  Tan-Ezatz thought back, remembering the pinprick at the base of her skull earlier. “If I kept track of every skirmish, every stray shot fired at us, HaustColonel, I would most certainly break down. That is your job.”

  “I think the wiping out of an entire patrol worthy of some note.”

  “Yes.” Tan-Ezatz forced concentration, drawing in the incident, tasting fear, pain and panic. She blinked back yellow flashes of shrapnel and white streaks of blasterfire. “Most distressing.”

  Kavanaugh led them to a dining room with broad windows giving a view of gardens and fountains that would be most festive by spring. Tan-Ezatz allowed herself to be shown to the end of the table opposite the Governor. The thick mahogany surface put some space between the two, for which she was sure both were relieved.

  Kavelton sat at her side and Kavanaugh’s wife and various aides occupied the other seats. A pair of rifle-armed Fanrohausts forced themselves by scurrying servants to flank the HaustMarshal.

  “This incident suggests something other than worm drifters.”

  “It suggests bad timing and desperation,” Tan-Ezatz answered. Kavanaugh was standing, had a glass of wine lifted and was saying something he apparently thought important. She tried to focus on him.

  “Blaster weapons suggest an unusually well-armed band laying an ambush more successful than anything on record in this region for the last eleven months.”

  “Zarven, you annoy me.”

  “My Haust, the patrol had been investigating the crash site of orbital debris.”

  Tan-Ezatz felt her nerves chill, Kavanaugh and the others fading completely from her attention as she pondered.

  “You think the Coalition managed an insertion?”

  “The thought had occurred to me.”

  Tan-Ezatz eyed Kavanaugh, her onboard AI recording the speech her divided attention did not allow her to follow.

  “Very well. What is it you intend to do?”

  “I’m taking a team into the hills. We will gather data and attempt to find a trail.”

  “Fine. I will examine your findings when you are done. Did you have another reason for interrupting me?”

  “No.”

  “Leave me, then.”

  Zarven’s presence flickered from her consciousness with a hint of his irritating smile.

  Kavelton and the others at the table were raising glasses and looking at her. A quick reference to her AI gave her the gist of Kavanaugh’s useless prattle: “harmony, prosperity and continued cooperation between our peoples...”

  Sure.

  Tan-Ezatz forced the awkward smile again, snapped a touch of her annoyance with the worms Kavelton’s way, and raised her own glass of the caustic-smelling alcohol. Crystal rang off crystal as she steeled her mind for an evening of sycophancy and the bleating of a defeated and doomed people.

  “ALL CLEAR, HaustColonel.”

  Zarven and the fire team serving as his bodyguard moved uphill into the worm ruins. The seared flesh stench of death caught in the back of his throat as he came to a halt and looked over the carnage. Blast had stripped snow from gouged earth but left tattered heaps of Minrohausts to freeze on bare, hardened mud. Under weak starlight, they looked like so much garbage spilled by rummaging animals.

  Zarven knelt beside a corpse, feeling little for the slain slave but curiosity. Dried and frozen blood formed a rust-red crust across shredded fatigues and chewed armor plate. Razor-edged slivers glittered where they had nailed armor to the body. The Minrohaust’s face was locked in a snarl or a scream. It was difficult to say which.

  “Ordrek’s here,” Churvak said with a hot-sick undercurrent of outrage.

  Zarven rose and strode to the collapsed structure where Churvak stood, staring at the body of the young officer. Ordrek’s chest and face were gone. A light powdering of frost covered the worst but Zarven could see metal and plastic fused to meat.

  “The squad Fanrohaust’s on the hill. Head shot.”

  “Yes.” Zarven’s gaze strayed to tracks cut through the ruins. He stepped over to examine the nearest trail, taking in tread marks. A query to his AI records identi
fied them as left by Coalition standard-issue footwear—probably looted from a Lurinari Defense Force cache.

  Zarven focused, brought up a tactical display showing Churvak’s platoon spread in a dispersed semicircle, checking potential escape routes. Five icons flashed yellow, the team following the tracks. The flicker of their acknowledgement told him the trail faded into the rocky hills to the east.

  “We can re-acquire the trail,” Churvak said. “We can continue the pursuit.”

  “Pointless. They would lay another ambush and we’d lose Commandos.”

  Zarven returned to the records of the skirmish. Ordrek had been cautious but not meticulous. In his senses could lay clues the young officer had not taken into account from lack of experience.

  The seconds before the blasts crawled through Zarven’s mind. Ordrek’s tip-off had been the line of disturbed snow at the village perimeter, where the charges had been less than perfectly planted. But there was something else, right before even that. A smell, faintest musk, like dampened hide, too faint for even Ordrek’s AI to find it outside acceptable tolerances.

  Zarven dropped the recording and took a deep breath, tried to acquire the scent but found only the stinging reek of the slaughtered.

  “Let us go after them, HaustColonel.” Churvak’s words rode a wave of emotion across the Awareness.

  “Out of the question. We don’t know the ground and we have no idea how many more of them there may be.”

  “They can’t be more than three hours ahead of us.”

  Zarven felt the youth’s agitation as a nauseating pressure at the base of his stomach. He had seen this before; young Korvans caught up in the shock and horror of the dead, a drawback, perhaps, of the communal intellect. With time most learned to filter the worst out. But some, the occasional, overly sensitive ones lost themselves in it.

  “Did you know him, Churvak?” Zarven asked, looking the young Korvan over.

  “Not personally, no. But his harmonic still screams.”

  “I know. Let it go.”

  “It’s hard. I am...disgusted.”

  “That’s normal. It’s all right. Hate them, Churvak. Hate the worms.”

  A glimmer drew Zarven’s eye from his subordinate. He moved toward it, to the collapsed dome Ordrek’s fire had punished in his last moments, and leaned in.

  A piece of curved metal lay in the frozen muck. A blastisteel plate. Zarven reached in and picked the piece up, examining the gouge made by a plasma bolt near miss, the fused synthe-leather on the plate’s underside, the hint of charred tissue.

  “What is it?” Churvak asked.

  “Battle armor, third generation blastisteel. Probably saved some worm’s shoulder.”

  “Old Defense Force issue?”

  “No,” Zarven said, the old smile pulling into place. “Nothing like this was made in their factories until after the war started. After Lurinari fell.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means this was worn by no simple worm holdout.” Zarven stood, rubbing his fingertips across the icy metal. “The Coalition is here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wind moaned through a maze of boulders that looked like the playthings of careless gods, cast across the sides of the Coreal Mountains.

  Crozier followed Ro through the labyrinth along a path of ice and shifting gravel. The trees remained thick in the mountains and snow crowned the rocks. Crozier’s feet were numb and clumsy inside damp, half-frozen boots. He raised a hand to wipe away the film of ice forming in the bristles of his fledgling beard. His shoulder felt tight and tingling still, two weeks after the energy blast had seared it.

  Ro halted between a boulder and a sickly-looking evergreen, raised his hand, and knelt. Crozier mimicked the motion and repeated the gesture to Cynthia and Sandy, trailing behind. He had been through this often, by now. The stop would be followed by the signal to hide because whoever had point had seen something. Crozier swallowed, throat stinging from the cold. He couldn’t remember what a good rest felt like.

  Ro turned suddenly and waved for Crozier. Surprised, he rose and scampered after the Grak. Their route wound between boulders then under dense pine branches. Ro paused in the gloom of the trees and pointed to a mass of sandstone, jutting like an upper lip from a shallow slope.

  “Under there,” Ro whispered. “Go ahead.”

  Crozier glanced at him, uncertain, but the Grak nudged him on. Much of the rock lay under snow and gnarled tree root. As he got closer, Crozier saw the shadows beneath the stone. Great, another cave.

  He looked back, saw Ro pointing for him to crawl in. Fine.

  Crozier slid sideways along biting pebbles into a grave-like stillness. He reached a level surface and crouched. His helm visor flicked to light enhancement. He saw the forms of Cameron, Cole and Vorsh watching him with a fourth figure, a boy bundled in thick hides and scavenged clothing. Crozier opened his mouth to question but Cole put an upraised index finger to his lips.

  The boy led the way down along slippery rock through spaces as narrow as Crozier’s insertion module. The air felt wet and clammy across his skin. He thought he heard movement above—behind?—and licked his lips as he scoured his memory for mention of bats in his Lurinari briefings.

  Faint, greenish light appeared below, enough for Crozier to deactivate and raise his visor. He realized Cameron, Cole, Vorsh, and the boy had been making their way through the dark by touch.

  Uneven stone beneath his boots became fashioned steps. Crozier took note of burnt-out light sconces and a map machine-etched into the wall and knew suddenly where he must be. A moment later, as he stepped from the cramped side-passage into an open and lit space, his suspicions were confirmed.

  He stood in a hardened corridor stretching either direction into the black distance, tall and wide enough for two heavy vehicles to pass each other with room to spare. Lengths of glow-strips and splashes of florescent paint provided weak illumination, aided a great deal by a fire dancing in a trash can around which filthy figures in rags gathered, using a battered helmet to boil something that smelled bitter. By the light, Crozier read faded directions for traffic and personnel along the crumbled concrete walls.

  This is it...the Station...

  The denizens of the underground complex turned to regard the newcomers, faces craggy, gaunt and cold with suspicion. The boy who had led them down scurried to a pile of blankets and cushions that turned out to be a woman and another child bundled together. They huddled in a tight, dirty mass, eyes glittering with hunger at Crozier. His hand went unconsciously to the pouch at his belt and the last crumbs of proto-ration there.

  “Come,” Ro said with a hand on Crozier’s shoulder.

  Ro led the way, following a series of faint arrow patterns of glow-strip pasted along the wall. The arrows indicated a narrower passage branching off from the main one and the group heeded them, climbing a short flight of stairs. Ahead, electric light glared from a half-closed steel door. Crozier heard a wet cough and picked up the scent of cigarettes.

  Ro stiff-armed the door open, squinting as brilliance spilled forth.

  The chamber had been a control room of some sort, grated steel floors, flickering overhead lamps, a bank of computers—mostly gutted. The floor was a mess of dissected computer parts and garbage. A pot of dark fluid that might be coffee hissed on a much-abused hot plate. A figure in a stained work smock sat at the computer consoles, hunched over circuitry as a soldering gun glittered and sizzled.

  “‘I’ll keep an eye out’, he says,” Ro said in a loud, mocking voice. “A Ground Strike Division could have waltzed in here and you wouldn’t have noticed, Hep!”

  The man looked up through goggled eyes, his mouth gaping. Shock curved into a smile and he let out a bark of laughter. He tore the goggles from crinkling black eyes and threw his arms wide. As the swivel seat rotated him to face the group, Crozier saw both legs were missing at the knee.

  “Atchraq, you Grak son-of-a-bitch! I was beginning to worry I’d have to go
out and kick some Screwhead ass all by myself!”

  Ro clapped hands with the crippled man.

  “You were gone a damned long while, this time.”

  Ro pulled up a chair and sat down. The others stacked weapons and gear against a wall. Vorsh occupied the furthest corner from the door, took out his dagger, and began sharpening it. Cole cracked open a hatch that turned out to be a storage chest and handed what appeared to be a first aid kit to Sandy. Cynthia slumped onto a disreputable-looking couch. Cameron flopped down beside her and began the motion to drape his legs across hers. She flung him to the floor with a curse that was more annoyance than rage.

  Crozier found himself without a seat.

  “We had some trouble,” Ro said to the old man.

  “You were followed?”

  Ro’s teeth bore in what could not quite be said to be a smile. “No farther than Shroville.”

  “Ah...good.” The cripple looked at Crozier. The man’s face was a pattern of wrinkles, partially hidden by oily smears and a frizzy tangle of whitening beard. The features lost some of their age and pain as his eyes gleamed at Crozier. “This him?”

  “This is him,” Ro said. “Major Devin Crozier.”

  “Major!” The main peeled off a work glove and saluted, his right hand missing the smallest finger. His smile was a shining mess of crooked fillings. “Warrant Leader Hep Janotski, Lurinari Defense Force, Coreal Valley regional motor pool.”

  Crozier nodded and returned the salute. “Warrant Leader Janotski.”

  “Hep’s our armorer and provider of minor technical miracles,” Ro said.

  Janotski waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, well...I gotta be good for something.” He smiled at Crozier again. “‘Course, now that you’re here, we’re gonna have a few more miracles.”

  Crozier forced a smile, felt uncomfortable as he glanced around, noticed that the others were looking at him. He felt a hand on his shoulder, turned and saw Sandy.

  “Major, sit, please.” She gestured toward the couch that Cynthia had vacated to retrieve a cup of coffee. Sandy wore a bulky white glove covered with intricate traceries of circuitry and sensory pads. Cole pulled one from the kit he’d retrieved and put it on, as well. Med-sense gloves—“Doc Mittens”, the troops had called them on Weyland IV.