Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  “It’s all right,” Crozier said gently, tried to wave her off. “I’m fine.”

  “Not for just your health,” Sandy said with a hint of force. “These will isolate any nano-probes you may have picked up.”

  “Not too likely you did,” Ro said. “But we have to be sure. The Korvans seeded this whole region with nanites when they first moved in. One kind allowed them to tag and track us. The other was some attack-model, broke down the cellular walls of vital organs, nerves.” His features tightened and his voice acquired an edge. “I figure they stopped using the second kind for the same reason we won’t use bio-weapons anymore; too hard to control the results.”

  Crozier licked his lips as something shivered within him.

  Ro’s tones relaxed. “We were close to the Korvans, so there’s always the chance we picked up a tag. Not probable, as the probes don’t weather the elements well.”

  “If you’ve got a tag, a localized burst of EMP will clear it out,” Sandy said, hand on his arm again. “Please.”

  Crozier did as she asked, setting aside his blastrifle and stripping his gear and helm. He groaned as he lifted the weight of armor free of his shoulders and eased his aching body down onto the course, ragged couch.

  Sandy began waving the glove over him in slow circles, working her way down from his head. He watched her careful movements, her attentive brown eyes and the reddish highlights of her uneven-cut hair. This close, he realized she would be a pretty woman without the dirt and near-starvation and the constant frown. She and her sister shared sharp, elfin features but Sandy’s had a tightness to them, around the mouth and eyes, wrinkles of care and pain that would become crevices in old age.

  For a moment, he was reminded of—

  The sense-glove chimed. Sandy’s eyes widened as she read the sensor results. She rose, took a step away from Crozier. Her voice was small as she looked at him. “What the hell?”

  Crozier got to his feet. “It’s all right.”

  Sandy flinched away, right hand going to left sleeve to produce a one-shot holdout pistol. “What the hell are you?”

  “Sandy...” Cynthia moved toward her sister, coffee spilling in her haste.

  “He’s not right!” Sandy’s voice was shrill as she avoided her twin’s touch. “He’s not human!”

  “I can explain—”

  “Sandy, put that down.” Ro moved toward her.

  “It’s all right, Sandy,” Crozier said, palms now upraised in submission. “The sensors are detecting my augmentations.”

  “Your what?” The edge left her voice but tension remained in the hand holding the gun.

  “Enhancements. Bio-tech. Artificial glands, amplified reflexes, bone hardeners, that sort of thing.” There was more, of course, cutting edge prototypes, but they didn’t need to know that and he hardly understood them himself. “They’re standard Pathfinder upgrades.”

  “You’re...modified.” The word sounded like a curse in Sandy’s mouth.

  “That’s right.”

  “Like them.”

  “No.” Crozier’s voice went hoarse, sudden anger kicking a hint of adrenaline into his blood. He stepped toward her. “Not like them. Never like them.”

  Sandy’s eyes wavered slightly as she lowered the pistol. She looked down, mouth twisting with words she would not say.

  The others glanced back and forth between the two in the silence.

  “I...uh...had thought we would wait until later,” Ro said in an artificially loud tone, “but perhaps now would be a good time to see the lower levels? If you’re up to it, Major?”

  Crozier pulled his glare from Sandy to meet the Grak’s eyes. “Yeah. Sure. That’s why I’m here, right?”

  Ro nodded and gestured for him to follow. Janotski dragged a battered-looking wheelchair to his side and lifted himself onto it. He rolled after the Grak.

  “Think I’ll tag along,” Cameron said in a murmur. He gave Sandy a wide berth as he stepped by her.

  Crozier moved to follow but paused at Sandy’s side. She wouldn’t look at him. Her breaths came fast and tight. He looked at her profile, felt a pang of guilt for his rage.

  “Look, I...you were surprised,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  When she didn’t respond, Crozier turned and left.

  THERE WERE ROOMS BEYOND Janotski’s place, shadowy chambers that had probably served as storage space, offices, or private quarters.

  Sandy had no idea what the room she had claimed when they first came to this place six months ago had been. She liked to pretend it’d been a bedroom, even though it held no bed, only a tattered sleeping bag and a tangle of blankets. She shined the glow-rod she’d liberated from Janotski’s around the chamber, made sure nothing else had taken up residence. From somewhere came the echo of dripping water. Shivering, she sat on the cold, vaguely damp blankets.

  She took a long breath and tried to banish the angry, flashing green of Crozier’s eyes from her head.

  Her hand went to the small sack of belongings she kept here for safekeeping. Fingers fumbled about and found the pack of cigarettes. She was down to the last three from the carton she had taken when they held up that collaborator truck just out of Teshima, two months ago.

  For an icy moment, she remembered the truck driver, shot in the mouth, close range, when he reached for something in his coat. He hadn’t been armed and Sandy never knew what exactly the fool had been up to. The shot, the recoil of the rifle in her hands, had surprised her, the heavy slug splashing teeth out through the back of his—

  She reached into the bag again, felt cool metal, and pulled out her catch. And frowned.

  The silver cigarette lighter with the grinning skull engraving had been on the truck. The fine gold chain tangled around the lighter and the crucifix dangling from it had not. The tiny martyred Jesus seemed to look up at her.

  Shit...

  For a moment, Sandy remembered her mother pressing the talisman into her hand so tightly the gold bit her skin as explosions and gunfire shook the heavens outside. It would protect her, she said, and her sister. Take care of each other...you’ll have to be strong, grow up a lot sooner...I’m sorry...we’re all sorry...

  Sandy blinked the nightmare away. She heard footsteps, knew whose they must be, and hid her mother’s charm in the filthy sack. She flipped the top of the lighter, looked into its sparkling flame and touched the cigarette to it. Quick puffs brought smoke with the sweet bite of Sothran hybrid tobacco. She looked up.

  Cynthia stood in the doorway to the chamber, leaning on her left shoulder with her arms crossed.

  “You all right?”

  Sandy blew smoke her sister’s direction. “Yeah, great.”

  “You had me worried,” Cynthia said, stepping in to the room. She smiled, the left corner of her mouth curving up, the opposite of Sandy on the rare times she smiled. “Not just me. I thought Crozier was going to shit his pants.”

  “He should have,” Sandy said with a satisfied snort.

  Cynthia chuckled. “Well, remember that he’s here to help us.”

  “And we don’t have enough problems?” Sandy took another drag on the cigarette. “Modifying a person...it’s not natural...” She looked at her twin. “Tell me what the point of all this is if we end up changing ourselves so much that we’re not human.”

  Cynthia sat down beside her and shrugged. “I suppose it makes Crozier better at his job.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Sandy exhaled smoke, licked the sweet taste from her lips. “He’s...what he stands for is frightening.”

  Cynthia’s smile changed, taking on a mischievous glint. “He’s handsome, don’t you think?”

  Sandy swallowed and felt a hint of nausea, figured it must be the cigarette. She got up. “No. Not the way you’re thinking.”

  Cynthia went silent. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “Sorry...didn’t mean anything by that...”

  Cynthia had always been the extrovert, the one with friends, male friends. Sand
y had stumbled through the rituals of pairing, the twisting dance where truth and lie, friend and foe swirled and blurred together. Like war. She had rarely felt the need or the urge for that kind of contact before.

  And after the Invaders came...never.

  “Say, could I snag one of those—”

  Sandy whirled. “Wait...”

  Cynthia already had her hand in the bag, was withdrawing the crucifix. Her face changed, features tightening. She held the charm up, seemed to see it for the first time.

  “I didn’t know you still had this.”

  “It...helps with the memories, sometimes.”

  Cynthia nodded, eyes focusing, but not on anything not in the room. She set the necklace down on the bag. “I’m sure it does.”

  “Cynn?” Sandy knelt by her sister, reached out a hand, but was afraid to touch her.

  “I don’t think about her much, anymore. I don’t think about any of them.” Cynthia folded her hands together. The pressure of her grip mottled the skin over her knuckles. She blinked. “Does that make me bad?”

  “No.” Sandy sat down again.

  “Sometimes I wonder why we’re still here and the others...aren’t.” Cynthia’s lips folded into a twisted, wrinkled line. She looked at Sandy with glassy eyes.

  Sandy said nothing, had thought the same thing so many times after smarter, braver, better people had been consumed. She handed her twin the smoldering butt. It had a drag or two left on it.

  Cynthia saw it, smiled and accepted. She took a pull, appeared to relax. “I hate this shit.”

  “Me, too.”

  Cynthia took another drag and smothered the butt on her boot heel. The unfocused look from before was back in her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder why we bother fighting, at all...why we don’t just give in to them...”

  “Because we’re right.” Sandy said, hearing the force in her voice echo. She set her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Because this is our home.”

  “WATCH YOUR HEAD...”

  Ro led the way, panning a glow-rod’s greenish beam before him. He ducked to avoid an overhang where the corridor roof sagged. His breath came out in frosty puffs. Concrete and rock gleamed wetly in the light.

  “Not exactly stable-looking.” Crozier had to speak up over the clatter of Janotski’s wheelchair. They had had to carry the thing—and Janotski—when they rappelled down an elevator shaft.

  “They tried to seal the place with blasting charges when the Korvans took Mondanberg, about twenty months ago. Didn’t want it to fall into their hands, didn’t even want them to know it was here.” Ro looked back at Crozier, teeth flashing greenly. “When we received instructions from the Free States to come here and make preparations for your arrival, we weren’t even sure we’d find anything.”

  “But you did,” Jantoski said with a laugh. “Found me.”

  “How long have you been down here?” Crozier asked the crippled man.

  “Since the main Screwhead drive took the last of the major settlements in the Valley. Don’t really know how I found this place, the shape I was in. Folk around here found me, took me in, kept me alive longer than I got a right to be.”

  “Yes. About them...”

  “Oh, you don’t need to worry about them, Major,” Cameron Carlisle said at his side. “Most of them got more reasons to hate the Screwheads than all of us combined.”

  “Boy’s right, Major,” Janotski said.

  Crozier wouldn’t bet on that, but none of these people had seen what the Korvans did to populations on worlds they were less concerned with handling with care.

  “Just a little farther,” Ro said over his shoulder, beginning to increase his pace.

  “Major, you were talking about your...uh...augmentations,” Cameron said.

  “Not now, Cameron,” Crozier replied, remembering Sandy’s bristle. “All right?”

  “Yeah.” Carlisle’s tone was undeterred. “What about this place? What is it that’s down here? Some sort of supply cache?”

  Crozier shrugged to himself. Might as well tell the kid. He was here. “A Coalition anti-orbital station.”

  “A big fusion weapon? Like the one that was at Hot Crater?”

  Crozier gave Cameron a questioning look.

  “There was an anti-orbital battery at Sho,” Janotski said by way of explanation. “The Screwheads took it out with a nuke strike, early on. Place is still so hot you can’t get within ten klicks of it.”

  “Well, this one had orders to remain quiet when the invasion came, not expose itself. The crew was supposed to button themselves up and wait it out, wait to support a counterattack. When that never came...” Crozier felt a shiver.

  “They must have been down here years,” Cameron said.

  “When the Korvans closed in on this region, they must have done like Ro said, sealed the place and abandoned it.”

  Crozier looked ahead. Ro’s light shined across a wall of rock.

  “They had orders to suicide rather than submit to Korvan interrogation. We can only assume they did.”

  The small group stopped at the dead end. Crozier took note of the rock surface, too smooth, too level to be natural.

  “I knew there was something big down here,” said a new voice at their backs.

  The group turned as one to see Vorsh, pale in the darkness with glittering eyes. He stepped into the circle of light from Ro’s glow-rod and looked at the Grak. “But you never told us it was anything like this.”

  “Need to know,” Ro replied, facial whiskers rippling.

  The Shmali spat something back in his own language, then looked at Crozier. “And I suppose you’re the only one who can open it?”

  “Either me or the original crew. The codes have to be set back on Earth.”

  “Human paranoia.” Vorsh folded his arms before his chest. “Well, then...let us see if you were worth the risk.”

  Crozier met Vorsh’s eyes for an instant, felt the imagined knifepoint at his back again. He turned, stepped up to the wall, and placed his right hand on the stone. He closed his eyes, focused on his sense of touch, the chill surface beneath his fingertips, the rough patterns. His hand followed the intricate tracery of stress fractures and imperfections left by the tools that had fashioned the barrier and the entire Station beyond right into the living rock.

  There. The rectangle of microscopic sensors woven into the stone was at shoulder-level, imperceptible to the human eye and difficult to spot with anything but the most determined scan. Moment of truth...if this doesn’t work, it’s all been a waste...

  Crozier pressed the shape, felt a snap of electricity in his small finger as the sensors detected and recognized the chip imbedded in the metacarpal. The air filled with the grinding of stone and the hum of machinery. Crozier stepped back.

  A hatch-sized slab of rock recessed into the wall and slid away. A narrow corridor lay beyond, banks of dim red emergency lights flickering to life and illuminating the length of the passage.

  Open sezzamee...HoloAdventure silliness, really. Oh, how the Security types had an imagination.

  “Maintenance hatch,” Crozier said. “Should lead straight down to the reactor core. The command post will be along the way.” He’d been forced to memorize the complex map. It was a cylindrical layout, radiating out from the reactor and the particle beam projector it powered.

  They followed the passage down, occasionally fumbling in the dark where sections of lighting had failed. The corridor was meant for one man, narrow and short. Crozier had to proceed sideways and hunched. He heard the racket of Janotski and the breathing and curses of the others.

  They reached another hatch, this one blastisteel. Crozier palmed it and the metal slid aside. He stepped into a new hallway, this one broad with room for equipment as well as personnel and curving out of sight to the left and right. The emergency lights were brighter and more evenly spaced here.

  Crozier took a breath. The air was still and had a stale taste, hinting at dust and neglect.

 
“How did you do that?” Cameron asked, as the others emptied from the maintenance hatch. “Open it, I mean?”

  Crozier smiled, wiggled his small finger. “Implant. A coded chip like the installation’s crew would have had so that the computer recognizes me.” Degradable so that if he bought it, the chip would rot with the rest of him.

  “Major.” Ro stood beside an armored door marked “RESTRICTED - CONTROL AND COMMAND”.

  “Uh-huh.” Crozier stepped up to the door and touched it open.

  The room beyond was compact with a row of seats and banks of computers squeezed together. Large HoloScreens dominated the wall over the crew stations. They came to life, along with the overhead lights as Crozier stepped into the chamber. Consoles lit up and machinery whirred into motion.

  The lights illuminated a corpse piled in upon itself in the corner opposite the entrance.

  Tatters of uniform were obvious, as was the toothy smile and scraps of brittle tissue still lingering over blackened bone. A neat hole was burned through the right temple. A blastpistol still lay in the body’s desiccated hand.

  The console nearest the corpse was covered with a black-red stain and did not come online with the others. Crozier searched the empty eye sockets before looking away.

  “Good afternoon, Major Crozier,” said a bored-sounding, vaguely male voice. “Welcome to Orbital Security Station, Lurinari Four. Are you and your companions Captain Harrigan’s replacement crew?”

  “We are,” Crozier answered, sitting down at the nearest console. He wondered if the poor bastard in the corner had been Harrigan.

  “Excellent. You will want to know that current status is Hibernation Mode, functioning at five percent minimal off reserve batteries. Would you like to bring up the main reactor at this time?”

  “Not now,” Crozier replied. “I would like a cursory diagnostic run for all primary systems. And bring up an installation schematic on the main screen, please.”