Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  The Military Highway lay below the well-forested ridge Crozier occupied, running along an embankment raised above soggy undergrowth but narrow and worn with erosion. Cracks spider-webbed the concrete, crumbling in numerous spots, the harsh work of Lurinari’s unforgiving elements. Stretched thin, the Korvan war machine could no longer afford work crews to repair the highway.

  Opposite Crozier’s perch rose a low ridge blanketed with swaying razor grasses, highlighted by the pink flare of their tassels and bowed with the weight of seed-swollen heads. The tops of trees poked over the top of the rise, the hint of forest that had receded from the reverse slope. Squat, dense bushes interrupted the rippling sea of green.

  Crozier lowered his helm visor. The AI highlighted strings of detno-chord, concealed in the brush to either side of the highway, linking flechette mines, and disruptor charges. An icon glowed over the spot where the anti-vehicle mine had been laid beneath a carefully lifted lip of crumbling concrete.

  The charge was a Viper-mine, a two-stage device with a high explosive to clear the covering followed by a short-range shaped-charge warhead. With luck the poor condition of the road would conceal it from Korvan sensors.

  The work had been done the night before, under an overcast, starless sky with sporadic showers to heighten the misery and tension. The guerrillas had waited, since then, tolerating the damp, the muck, and the heat. And fear. Waited for the Korvan re-supply convoy Ro’s expanding network of sources had insisted was assembling in Teshima and would have to pass through here on its way to Outpost 9.

  The site Crozier had chosen for the ambush lay south of the lower Estrek River, south of the fords the Korvans would have to cross because they hadn’t gotten around to rebuilding the bridge there. There had been any number of attacks at the fords and just to the north in the last twenty months. South of the river, the Korvans would begin to relax—if such a thing could be said of their kind.

  Of course, this position put the guerrillas much closer to Outpost 9 and what support it could rush to a beleaguered convoy.

  But the bastards were late, very late. Crozier expected a wait of hours, had thought they’d see the Korvans by dawn and certainly no later than noon. He couldn’t hold the guerrillas in position here for a full day, not moving, no communication—he’d forbidden any radio traffic that the Korvans might pinpoint, even though the holdouts were now using Coalition-issue helms liberated from the Station’s stashes.

  Crozier glanced over his shoulder, found Cameron Carlisle after a moment, huddled in the thick undergrowth. Visible only because Crozier knew he was there, draped with strands of burlap, cloth, twig and leaf netted together, almost redundant over the smart-fibers and synthe-leathers. The rest of the guerrillas with Cameron were invisible.

  The boy threw Crozier one of his half-rotten smiles.

  Crozier had seventy holdouts, two groups of platoon size on either side of the highway, each with a squad in reserve. Their fields of fire angled like the legs of a V, sweeping the road into a diamond shaped kill zone. The Korvans would be exposed on three sides. If fire discipline held. If formations held.

  He had the pick of the litter, the most experienced, most steady of the refugees that had dribbled into the Station over the last three months, funneled there though Ro’s growing Resistance network. Most were Lurinari Defense Force or Coalition Regular Army veterans. All of them had been fighting the Korvans for some time, had seen friends, families, everything they knew and loved ground away. All had very little left to lose.

  Crozier’s face itched. He scratched at his full beard, sought, found, and extracted the hard-shelled insect burrowing into the hair, seeking warm flesh. He crushed the little monster between thumb and index finger. The hunched, tiny-headed corpse was one of the species indigenous to Lurinari that had survived the chaos when human, Grak, and Shmali brought their disparate ecologies with them to invade its world.

  Crozier extended the water stem from his helmet. A tiny reservoir collected and converted sweat from his head in the rear piece of the helmet, could also be connected to the small tank mounted in the back of his armor. He bit down on the nipple, taking frustrated pulls of lukewarm fluid that did not ease gritty thirst.

  Maybe they’re not coming. Crozier was shocked how much he wanted to believe that, how much he wanted to get the hell out of here, find someplace he could clean up, shave, get a bite of real food. How hard would it be to give the signal, call the ambush off? There was no shame. The Korvans weren’t coming. The holdouts could only wait so long. More dangerous to wait here, run the risk of begin exposed by a chance over-flight. The others were wet, hot, and tired. They wanted him to call it.

  Fresh sweat dampened the lining of Crozier’s helmet. He wished Ro were here. The rest of the original group was. But someone had to coordinate the growing army of the Resistance as it continued to assemble and train at the Station.

  Maybe it is time—

  A quadrant of Crozier’s helmet divided off, flashing a rough map of the surrounding areas and highlighting a chain of icons in red, snaking south along the highway at a cautious fifty kilometers an hour. The helmet passive sensors had detected the convoy, slowing as it forded the Estrek, by the mixture of spark plug emissions of captured local vehicles and the sun-bright signatures of the handful of fusion reactor-powered Korvan escorts.

  Less than five minutes away.

  A pair of crimson beads broke away from the convoy, darting ahead as the AI drew blinking yellow circles around them and projected a holographic schematic of the contacts across the upper left-hand corner of Crozier’s visor. Remote scout drones, guided by a Korvan in the convoy via their Awareness, one taking to the air for overhead surveillance, the other following at a more subdued pace along the road at head height.

  The tip of Crozier’s tongue worried across the sandy roof of his mouth. He felt the wedding ring itch against his chest. The hand he’d put against his blastrifle to steady it tensed with his desire to have the cool, metal circle in his fingertips. He blew a long breath out through his nostrils and felt the chill come.

  The first drone blurred by, a glinting, silvery saucer against the blue of the sky, the hum of its tiny anti-grav motor passing like an insect by one’s ear.

  Crozier blinked sweat, waited. An angry prayer lodged at the back of his throat that this mismatched jigsaw puzzle of ferals he’d gathered together had hidden themselves well, would not betray themselves with panic or carelessness.

  The second drone whirred over the crest of the hill and traced the line of the highway down into the hollow where the ambush was to take place. Crozier knew the devices could mask themselves in much the same way as his smart-fibers, though for this task their obviousness might draw a foolish attacker to take the obvious target and warn of impending attack.

  The drone reached the mined part of the highway. Late afternoon sun glanced off the chromed surface, made it flash like a plasma blast as it seemed to slow. Crozier felt the pulse in his neck, feeding his brain. The chill grew deeper. Perhaps the sane, un-augmented part of him would be feeling extreme fear.

  The second drone was past.

  The rumble of the approaching convoy grew, swelling over the crest of the hill and punctuated by the occasional blat of a crude diesel engine. Crozier consulted the holographic map, saw the lead vehicles picking up speed. The AI identified the first three as Korvan, a Kozra-type battle-car followed by two Hatapi armored personnel carriers.

  The lead vehicle topped the rise, a blastisteel gray slope of armor crowned by a stubby turret bulging twin weapons pods to either side like horns. The turret swiveled, plasma blasters bearing on the woods to the Kozra’s right. It was a squat vehicle, barely taller than a man, with a pointed bow encasing its single-Korvan crew and the sensor and weapons systems. The rest of its narrow hull stretched out behind it, armor folded over the fusion reactor and anti-gravity engine.

  The Hatapis came up behind the battle-car, rectangular shapes, sloped at the front and rear and bu
lging near the middle with pintel mounts. The snouts of autocannon swiveled to either side, vigilant of grassy slope and thick forest. The vehicles skimmed the road at perhaps a quarter meter, their anti-grav motors a casual murmur.

  Behind them groaned six-wheeled behemoths, originally ore-transports for the Coreal mines, now converted by the Korvans into supply haulers or troop carriers. The huge vehicles struggled along the narrow road, swaying as massive engines rattled the countryside with elephantine grunts. Three of those, then a confused train of hovervehicles, conventional trucks, pickups towing trailers of supply or ammo cartons or light artillery pieces.

  A full re-supply effort. Crozier had reiterated to the strike team leaders that this was a smash and run job, not a chance for rich pickings. Some of the less reputable holdouts were as drawn by loot as by any Cause. He could only hope they kept their greed controlled.

  The battle-car neared the mined spot of highway. Crozier sucked in his breath, felt the queasy ball tighten in his core, stinging the back of his throat with stomach acid. The chill heightened, chased aside the burning taste, brought on the slow-motion clarity as he focused on the spot highlighted by his helmet, the lip of concrete, ever so loose.

  Come on...

  The bow of the battle-car dipped just as it reached the mine, engine note rising to a sudden shriek as the vehicle braked. The sensors mounted low in the forward hull had caught on to the anomaly in the road a moment too late to—

  The Viper’s first stage went with a crack that underlit the hull of the battle-car with a piercing eyeblink of white, shattering the lip of concrete and bulging the skirts of the hovervehicle. The second stage slammed the unprotected belly of the Kozra, immolating itself in a molten blast that speared through the vehicle commander, through electronics, and the top of the turret to spray shattered blastisteel and bits of Korvan skyward.

  The blast struck Crozier’s face with a hot fist that bowed young trees and undergrowth away from it. Overpressure burst the fragile stalks of ripening razor-grass, filling the air with puffs of seedlings that caught in the mushrooming column of flame and trailed streaks of fire into the foliage to ignite.

  The glowing husk of the battle-car’s rear third grounded into the ditch on the forest side of the highway. Seared metal and charred wood sizzled in Crozier’s nostrils, brought on a cough as a swirling wave of smoke rushed over him with the patter of debris.

  Crozier gritted his teeth as the roadsides erupted in tracers and blaster fire. The narrow stalk of the Korvan convoy withered under the assault.

  PERCHED BELOW THE RIDGELINE, overlooking a slight bend in the highway fifty meters east of Crozier, Sandy Schweppenberg’s position should have allowed her to rake almost the full length of the convoy in the hollow. But the ear-shattering fireball of the battle-car’s death obscured her sight.

  Swearing, she hunched under the fallen tree trunk that formed a natural firing slit with the erosion cut ditch in which she hid. The muzzle of her repeat blastcannon, the only part of her protruding from the foliage-choked wash, shook with the motion. Sandy steadied the bipod-mounted plasma weapon as the shuddering chorus of the ambush tore in her ears.

  The second vehicle in line burst through the roiling wall of smoke, the driver counting on speed to carry the boxy APC clear of the kill zone. Behind it, orange ropes of tracer and white streams of blasterfire angled across the convoy, glitters of spark where bullets sang off metal or punched through, yellow-red streaks of slag where particle beams sliced armor or thin aluminum like roast.

  Before the APC lay grinning Death in the form of Sandy Schweppenberg.

  “Get him!” Cynthia was shrill, crouched behind Sandy and ready with a backpack of charges and a spare blastcannon barrel. “Get him!”

  Sandy experienced a howling moment of adrenaline as the holographic sight of her new Coalition helmet settled on the APC’s bow. She touched the trigger pad of the blastcannon and the air screamed as it burned away from the stream of plasma coursing from the blunt, ugly muzzle. Blasts like chain lightning splashed across the slope of the Invader frontal armor. Blastisteel slagged, burned wild yellows and violets as the fire clawed through bulkhead, through guidance systems, spraying the driver backward into the passenger compartment.

  The vehicle grounded, its skirts driving a wake of sparks from concrete as metal screamed and crumpled. The noise drove tears into Sandy’s eyes despite her helmet’s shielding. Puffs of smoke and flame pulsed through seams in the stricken vehicle.

  The third Korvan vehicle rose from the pavement, anti-gravity motors wailing for altitude. For an instant, the rectangular hull was silhouetted against the late afternoon sun, its unarmored belly and anti-grav nacelles exposed.

  A rocket slashed a line of vapor into the sky from the grasses on the opposite rise, the scream of its motor lost in the roar of its detonation across the APC’s unprotected guts. The vehicle spun end-over-end, shedding metal, chunks of anti-gravity engine, and the squirming body of one of its occupants. It came down with a crash felt like a hiccup through the ground, careening off the grassy slope before settling against the embankment of the highway.

  Invaders stumbled free of the rear of the first APC, one of them taking uncertain steps, like those of a sleepwalker. Sandy blinked, allowed the red dot of her holographic sight to ease across the nearest Invader.

  The roadside erupted in gouts of dirt and flashes. The hornet’s buzz of thousands of shards of glass-fine shrapnel rent the air. Sandy’s targets were swept away as explosions rippled across the roadside in a pattern made uneven by the damage battle had already done to the detno-chord links. The CRASH-CRASH-CRASH shredded sapling and undergrowth, chewed the tires of the big six-wheelers into sagging ruin, and crackled across armor plate in a million merry flickers.

  But the Invaders had not had enough time to panic and abandon their vehicles, had not been scattered in the open when the deadly sleet of blast and flechette clawed the roadside.

  Because some asshole had fired the charges too early.

  No matter. Sandy slid her firing dot across the nearest six-wheeler, half off the road on the forest side and hopelessly mired. She pulsed a testing burst into the partially exposed tanks on the underside, saw flames, and pressed down on the trigger for a long stream of cyan that tore the vehicle into a thundering inferno.

  Side and rear hatches sprung open, Invaders leaping free, some of them waving limbs already aflame. The vehicles behind, stranded but largely undamaged, began unloading in a kicked-anthill of scattering stick figures.

  Sandy met them with plasma fire, screaming through gritted teeth. Black-clad bodies dropped, flew apart. Most died silently, mouths open in mute agony or shock. Most would be the Living Dead gun fodder of the Invaders. But Sandy knew for every eight or ten of the slave-beasts she butchered, her bolts found one of the beings responsible for her pain, her hell.

  She cackled, her face a stinging, snarling mask as the muzzle of her repeat blastcannon glowed cherry red with the punishment of long bursts. Her blood sang, alive with rage and madness.

  Behind her, Cynthia cowered and trembled, hands pressed against the sides of her head, even though the helmet already offered ample protection against the ravaging cacophony of battle. Tears ran across twitching cheeks as she mouthed prayers and watched her sister and the others turn this forgotten corner of highway into Hell.

  “TOO SOON! TOO soon, dammit!”

  Cole Worthy was barely aware of Vorsh’s fist slamming the top of his helmet, barely heard the other’s shrill shout over the seemingly endless crash of the explosives he had triggered—prematurely, he was beginning to realize.

  Splashes of fire and debris clawed the road and kicked up a wave front of smoke and churned dirt. But Cole’s eyes remained on the twisted ruin of the APC a holdout missile had smashed from the sky. Its tongue-biting impact, perhaps a body-length in front of him, had thrown his body three inches into the air and sent pulses of pain straight to the bone.

  It had also turned
the two-man heavy weapons team hidden only ten meters below Cole’s perch—one of them frozen in the upraised-fist gesture of their victory—into a blackish red smear across the torn soil.

  God damn...

  The radio sizzled at his ears. Crozier’s voice and others jabbered over the shriek of blaster and plasma fire, the crack and whine of bullets. Cole licked cracked lips and ducked low as Korvan return fire bit the ground behind him, hot prickles of ravening energy and debris dancing across exposed skin, his face, the back of his hands. Someone began screaming, a trapped and wounded animal’s mindless howl. The air shimmered with heat and Cole couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty.

  Korvans scattered from the destruction of their convoy, bolting for the roadsides, then recoiling as they were chopped up in the crossfire. Vehicles were in flames, exploding up and down the line. But the Korvans were recovering fast, throwing their living-dead servants forward into the massacre, but buying themselves time to find cover behind wreckage or in the dead ground of the ditches along the roadside...

  Where Cole’s explosives would have annihilated them...had he waited...

  Cole looked to his right, vision wobbling and blurred. Vorsh lay beside him, spewing obscenities only another Shmali could interpret as he punished the roadside with blaster fire. The rapid white pulses would seem random to someone who didn’t know that when Vorsh touched the trigger, someone died.

  Vorsh turned and screamed something unintelligible, his foul breath and spittle dampening Cole’s wincing face. The Shmali struck the side of Cole’s helmet once more, his teeth flashing needles. Then he was dragging himself to his feet in maddening slow motion, his weapon pouring flashes of coherent light.

  The sound of the firefight increased threefold around Cole as other holdouts rose to join Vorsh’s charge, screaming and hunched over as if in a driving storm, closing in to death ground where the Korvans would find no succor.