Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  A pair of Brakas screamed ahead of their heavier, two-seat cousin, tinted blastisteel hulls jutting engine pods and stubby wings into the sun. Skimmer pilots were second only to starfighter pilots when came to reflexes and recklessness. Zarven felt the young Korvans’ enthusiasm and near-bloodlust, the explosive joy, after months of inactivity, at finally having a commander who let them bare their teeth.

  Zarven willed caution at the Braka pilots, even as he shared some of their pounding adrenal thrill. Armed only with a single light Gauss cannon—and that more for psychological reasons—the light scout skimmers were not designed with ground assault in mind. Their task was to take in enemy disposition with their sensor suites, perhaps draw fire, then break free and wait for the arrival of the dropships and the ground troops they would then support.

  The three skimmers topped a rise and dipped into a rock-strewn gorge. The scouts kicked their drives to full throttle and pulled away from Zarven with an audible howl, vanishing over the jagged top of a whitewashed cliff. The floor of the Vendo slammed up into Zarven as the skimmer leapt the cliff a second later. A glance back told him how close to decorating the rock face he’d been. Damn...a game for the young...

  Smoke smudged the sky over the scene of the battle, a low ridge only kilometers ahead. Orange billows of flame brought a reddish glare to the haze and nervous strobes of energy blasts pierced the green mass of trees. Thrill dropped away behind an icy curtain of clarity as Zarven’s smile tightened into a snarl of concentration.

  The Vendo shuddered as it braked, lingering to gather data from the scouts whose acceleration peaked in a chorus of wailing gravity drives as they passed over the fighting. Targeting icons glittered to crimson life across Zarven’s view, highlighting worm guerillas. The weapon systems’ readiness blinked eager yellow.

  One of the Brakas slowed, its course becoming an arch over the open, smoldering fields on one side of the Military Highway. Its Gauss cannon spat tight bursts with an air-ripping hiss. Damn, the young fool—

  The faint gray rope of a missile stabbed from the ground. There shouldn’t have been enough time at the close range, but youth and Korvan cyber-reflexes being what they were, the pilot pulled into a neck-breaking bank and the short-ranged projectile sailed by into the sky to detonate in a whitish puffball as its motor ran out.

  A second rocket took the scout skimmer in the tail as it pulled clear, shearing off an anti-grav nacelle and punching through thin armor into its fusion micro-plant. The young pilot’s elation over narrow escape became the instant, horrified realization of death, cut short as the scout shattered in a churning cloud of plasma that fluffed trees below.

  “Take us in,” Zarven said, though in his rage he was uncertain whether he’d given the command aloud or mentally. The killed pilot’s harmonic continued to crackle somewhere in his synapses.

  The Vendo swept forward, engine-scream thrumming through Zarven’s body. His thoughts danced down into the weapons systems and the whole craft shook as the starboard missile pod ripple-fired its load of 20mm rockets into the trees lining the highway. Explosions boiled through the foliage. He was close enough to see splinters and bodies hurtle away. He was close enough to see the worms, see their twisted faces of animal hatred, the muzzle flashes of their weapons turning skyward.

  The skimmer’s hull crackled as bullets glanced off blastisteel. An azure flash licked across the craft’s nose with a crack. Zarven’s face jerked away as if slapped. Air whistled. He blinked, saw crimson streaks in his eyes, saw the molten shards a blaster bolt had left of the plasteel canopy.

  Zarven licked blood from his lips as he unleashed streams of fire and metal.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The barrel of the repeat blastcannon went magma red before succumbing to the harsh usage. The weapon’s failsafe kicked in and the trigger pad went dead under Sandy’s locked finger.

  She was half turned to her sister to request the spare barrel when the double thunderclap of Crozier’s missile strikes brought the hovertank’s deflectors down and flipped the Schweppenberg sisters into the air to rebound off one another and land in a tangle in their ditch.

  Sandy pulled herself free of her twin, shaking with adrenaline and shock, wincing at the pain of a wrenched left shoulder. The roar of explosions and gunfire pounded her, tingling breaths of hot air against her skin. She crawled back to the weapon, knocked off its bipod by the shockwave. She reached for the barrel and retracted her hand with a hiss, singed by still-molten metal.

  “Now, Cameron!” Crozier’s voice sizzled in Sandy’s helm speakers. “Take it now!”

  She looked down across the highway, saw the blackened circle of scorched ground around the hovertank. Frantic movement from the forested side of the road gave away small figures festooned in shrubbery, scurrying for the angular, gray mass of the tank.

  The group split just shy of their objective, five guerillas going to ground, seeking cover and slashing the rear of the convoy and the Invaders still back there with their blastrifles. Three darted on, ducked low as they scrambled up the highway embankment while Gauss cannon chopped the air only centimeters above their heads.

  Sandy didn’t need to dial up the magnification of her helmet visor to know the gaunt figure in the lead was Cameron, blastrifle in one hand, something like a plate cradled under the other.

  Damn you, you brave little fool, she cursed and prayed. Her breath caught at the back of her throat and moments became endless. Just a little farther...he’s gonna make it...

  One of Cameron’s companions raised himself to see over the edge of the embankment. He opened his mouth to say something. The saw-scream of Gauss cannon carried his head away in a fan of blood. Cameron and the other survivor shrank away as the hovertank weapons tore the edge of the road.

  Gotta draw its fire somehow! Sandy looked about, hands itching for a weapon. The repeat blastcannon was out of action and carrying it here meant she hadn’t been able to bring anything else but her pistol. But Cynthia—Sandy turned to her sister.

  Cynthia shivered at the bottom of the ditch, arms clenched around her as tears cut trails through dust settled across her face. The bandoleer of charge packs for the repeat blastcannon looked ridiculously large on her. So did her backpack, which Sandy lunged for.

  Tearing aside flaps and working hard to ignore the whimpering of her twin, Sandy ripped the light missile launcher system free and began to inexpertly assemble it. It was an anti-air package, disposable and designed with harassment in mind. Fed by a five-shot clip, the launcher fired half-kilo rockets with tiny shaped charges unlikely to do more than pockmark a hovertank’s armor. But it might get the bastard’s attention...

  Sandy extended the tube with a jerk and locked it into place. She lifted the light plastic onto her shoulder, fingers of her right hand wrapping around the pistol grip. Something was wrong with her damned helmet, the visor blinking icons that didn’t make sense. She flipped it back, prayed that she could aim by eye. The hovertank filled her vision. She squeezed the trigger pad and held it down.

  The rocket launcher was a cold-gas system—a compressed gas charge mixing with minimal propellant to eject the missile from the weapon with little flash or recoil. Sandy heard a dull thump, then the skinned-cat screech of the rocket second stage igniting.

  But something didn’t work. The missile shot skyward, missing the tank altogether. Sandy’s dumbfounded eyes tried to track the rocket’s blurring progress. A spindly shadow lashed across her vision, nearly intersecting the path of the projectile. The scream of its gravity drives and the sizzle of its Gauss weapon shocked her into realization.

  Shit, they’ve brought up air support!

  That was what her helm had been trying to tell her. And the miniature AI mounted in the rocket, given a choice between the tank against which it was hopelessly outclassed and the prey that it had been designed to hunt, had gone with the latter. And missed.

  The second missile in the clip clacked into place. Sandy’s hand still clenched the t
rigger and her reflexes had the launcher pointed skyward. She squeezed. The rocket left its tube with the same thump-SCREEEEEECH, twisting in a dizzying mockery of the Invader aircraft’s evasion routine. The two met and the Invader’s death split the sky with a fiery roar. Sandy blinked away blazing afterimages as debris fluttered into the treetops.

  Something hit her from below, plowing her hard into the ground. She could hear her sister’s scream over the din. Cynthia’s hands held Sandy’s arms down as she struggled to get free, howling and cursing and demanding more. Her shoulder throbbed but she ignored the tears of pain, seeing only the flash of the Invader’s destruction still etched across her retinas.

  Then the maelstrom was all around them, a Gauss cannon tornado ripping ground, roots, trees, bark, hungry for flesh. Sandy stopped flailing, stopped fighting and shrank in her sister’s shuddering embrace as she pinched her eyes shut and tired not to feel the stinging impact of slivers against body armor.

  Sandy prayed that she’d bought Cameron time. She prayed that she’d be alive long enough to thank her sister.

  PART OF CROZIER REGISTERED the Korvan skimmer’s demise, as well as the growing anti-grav engine wail of more aircraft. But his eyes locked on Cameron, crouched at the roadside just beneath the skirts of the hovertank.

  Crozier heard movement behind him, glanced over his shoulder and saw knots of guerillas dashing by. Across from him, in the smoldering mess of the grassy rise, his helm AI picked out and highlighted more holdouts scattering.

  He wanted to scream at them to stop. But he panic was in them now. A detached part of him noted its contagious, abdominal tingle. Their losses had surely been bad. The resistance had been sterner than he’d anticipated. And now aircraft—they’d brought along a scattering of anti-air weapons, but bastardized for use against light vehicles, not assault skimmers!

  The chill shivered through Crozier, slowing motion. He looked down, seeking Cameron. The youth and his comrade, capitalizing on the hovertank’s seeming distraction, lurched up onto the road. Their strides covered the short space to the tank’s sloped hull like the steps in a nightmare dance. Cameron reached the armor, vaulted up onto its side, dropped his blastrifle in his haste.

  Plasma bolts glittered from the rear of the convoy, Korvan survivors in cover and picking their shots. Cameron’s comrade flinched as cyan fire flashed through his chest in an anticlimactic puff of smoke. He took an uncertain step back from the tank, face down in confusion at the seared ruin. Another step became a fall to the ground where the stricken guerilla lay, staring up at Cameron with his mouth open.

  A plasma blast struck the tank hull beside Cameron, kicking up sparks and bits of liquified metal. The youth lunged for the turret as more bolts gouged blastisteel. For a moment, he was safe with the turret shielding him from one side and the hull-mounted Gauss cannon—firing wildly as though in a panic—unable to traverse directly behind to get him.

  Cameron turned and pressed the plate of anti-matter explosive against the turret. Come on, come on... His hand worked the simple arming controls. Come on, damn you... The howl of anti-gravity engines filled the air, the shriek of incoming missiles, the snarl of Gauss cannon. But Cameron just about—

  The row of forest containing Crozier exploded, trees dissolving into a vortex of shrapnel. Crozier dived into the bottom of his ditch, cowering low into the slippery mess that had been human. With his augmentations, he felt every impact of the salvo in a never-ending chain, heard every blast, every scream of horror.

  Then it was over—and not. Crozier looked up and saw the Korvan assault skimmer, saw it because it was slowing to finish its strafing run, its underside glittering with the bluish sparks of its weapons fire. Fleeing guerillas turned, filling the sky with blaster fire and bullets in desperation.

  Crozier’s eyes went to Cameron. A stream of Gauss rounds had chewed a trail across the hovertank’s hull, shiny with dimpled blastisteel but probably harmless to the tank. Cameron sat against the turret, the plate of explosive adhered beside his head. His right foot and lower leg hung from tatters of crimson-soaked fabric. He looked down, seemed to notice the steady stream of red down the side of the hull. Pain turned his features white as terror filled his eyes.

  “Cameron...” The name grunted out. Crozier could no longer scream.

  The boy looked seemed to hear, looked around. Behind him, the assault skimmer churned the grassy hillside into chaos. Cameron’s eyes flashed as they found Crozier watching from the torn strip of forested ridge. His mouth opened in the rotten smile.

  Cameron raised his fist and brought it slamming backward against the anti-matter mine.

  Crozier ducked the moment he realized what was happening. He felt himself shrivel under the white glare of a tightly contained thermonuclear explosion.

  There would be little left of the tank but a husk of irradiated metal. The fireball clawing for the sky above it would be Cameron Carlisle’s tombstone.

  VORSH SHOOK HIMSELF, felt every centimeter of his body ringing with the shock of the blast. Flashes of painful light shot through his vision. His right arm ached, the pain becoming tight and sharp as he moved. Burned—not bad, but bits of fabric clung to the flesh.

  He crouched in the ditch below the road. The air was black with an oily smoke that stank of scorched metal and the near sweet tang of charbroiled fat. A woman lay in the ditch behind him, the female guerilla’s jaw shot away. She groaned and her hand gave a twitch, but the soil was soggy with her lifeblood.

  Vorsh turned away, wouldn’t waste time on the dead.

  He made his way south and east along the ditch, below the embankment and back towards the original ambush sight. The way seemed long and he was surprised at how far he and the holdouts that’d followed him had pushed.

  Vorsh wondered if Crozier had survived. He hoped so, wanted to ask the human if he was proud of the disaster he had concocted—not that it mattered. Vorsh didn’t kill for the Cause.

  One of the six-wheelers lay part way off the road, sagged into the ditch and still smoldering. Korvans lay clumped around it in blackened piles. Vorsh gave them a wide berth. He glanced over his shoulder, saw no movement. A plasma blast keened nearby, but the firefight had otherwise died out.

  Something grabbed Vorsh’s foot and he hit the ground with an involuntary Shmali curse.

  Vorsh turned over, lashing out instinctively. The hold on his ankle tightened with a vice-grip’s strength and he saw his assailant. The Korvan’s right arm was a charred stump and both his legs had been burned away below the knees. The bastard had been clever, had looked dead, and Vorsh cursed again, at himself.

  Vorsh slammed down with his free boot and felt the Korvan’s facemask crumple under his heel, felt its fingers loosen around his foot. He pulled free and scrambled back before standing. The Korvan shrank from its intended prey with an upraised arm, the hand and crooked, tensed fingers ready to claw again. The self-preserving measure gave it away. Vorsh hadn’t stumbled across one of the mindless Living Dead, this time, but one of their true Korvan masters.

  A pity there’d be no time to savor this.

  Vorsh moved on the Korvan. The hand shot for his leg, but the Shmali was faster and his toe caught the Korvan’s wrist with a dried-twig snap of bone. The Korvan started to roll away. Vorsh kicked again, and again, the third blow rewarding him with the wet crunch of collapsing trachea. The Korvan shuddered, made a quiet whistling sound, and was still.

  Another plasma shot screamed, this one much nearer, and Vorsh sensed motion in the smoldering near distance. Surviving Korvans would have sensed their brethren’s death, would be closing in on this spot, now, closing in on him. He spun and bolted, still light and crackling with the energy the killing had aroused.

  He had just reached the crumpled mass of the APC taken out early in the fight when he heard a tiny whimper. He dropped low to the ground and scanned his surroundings. One of the bodies was still moving. He looked closer, felt a jolt of recognition. Without thinking, he rushed to its
side.

  “Worthy...Cole, where are you hit?” Vorsh asked through grating teeth. He shook the ebony-skinned human, looked for blood, shards of bone, tiny holes of splinter wounds.

  The man trembled, whimpered again. He’d torn his helmet off and his hands were clamped against the sides of his face.

  Vorsh felt a snarl coming on. “Worthy, you coward, get up!”

  More shots flickered in the smoke, screams of cyan answered by nervous white pulses. Holdouts still out there, a cornered, pointless resistance. But the building rumble of anti-gravity engines—big ones—filled Vorsh with the nauseating, desperate desire to be out of this place now.

  Vorsh shook Worthy, hard this time. When the human didn’t respond, he turned him over and smacked him in the face. “We have to go! They’re coming!”

  “Vorsh...” The human’s eyes flared back from the animal madness that had clouded them. His tremors grew worse.

  “I’ll leave you, Cole,” Vorsh said. “I’m not dying here, because you’re weak.” When Cole said nothing, he let him go and turned to run.

  “Wait.”

  Cole Worthy struggled to his feet, still shaking, but moving to join the Shmali.

  Vorsh cursed himself again, furious that he’d wasted the time, risked himself. The human was weak. They were all weak. And doomed.

  Perhaps I have grown weak with them...

  The two disappeared into the smoke.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Zarven grimaced as he looked over the wreckage strewn across the blackened, smoldering highway.

  “My apologies, HaustColonel,” said the Fanrohaust medic, mistaking his expression as physical discomfort. Her application of first-aid synthe-skin spray onto the gash across his scalp took on a more guarded touch.