Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  Korvans moved amongst charred remains, gathering data, gathering their dead. A jagged crater occupied the spot where the hovertank had been, its ruins glowing like embers at the base of a firepit. Most of the brush fires had sputtered out or been extinguished but the hole was still hot enough to discourage any Korvan going too close.

  Anti-matter mines, blaster weapons, modern body armor, anti-air and anti-armor missiles...by the Imperative! We fought the equivalent of an understrength Coalition tactical company here...where do they get the firepower, the organization, the strength?

  Zarven remembered the plate of blastisteel in the snow.

  “HaustColonel?” That was Ozer, striding uphill to where Zarven sat on a fallen tree trunk, atop the ridge from which the worms had ravaged the convoy. “We have a count.”

  “Go ahead,” Zarven replied, too tired, too sore from the fight to peruse his subordinate’s mind—small wonder Zarven was still around to peruse anyone’s mind, after that anti-matter blast buffeted his skimmer. That Vendo pilot had been good. Ought to put him up for a commendation.

  “Thirty two worms confirmed killed, several of them obvious suicides,” Ozer said. He strode the last few steps to come to stand beside his seated commander. “There may be more. The worms have been known to carry away their dead.”

  “Unlikely,” Zarven said with a chiding mental snort. Ozer was older than many Commandos but young enough to still possess the weakness of optimism.

  Ozer paused at Zarven’s biting tone. “We...have salvaged three survivors, one male, two female.”

  Zarven nodded to himself. With an effort, he accessed Ozer’s records. The male prisoner was severely wounded, would never survive transport. One of the females was burned over two-thirds of its body and would not last much longer. The third was mangled but intact. She had had to be sedated to prevent her self-termination.

  “They’re useless,” Zarven said after a moment’s contemplation. “Liquidate the two critical ones. We take the third back to Outpost 9 and hand it over to HaustCaptain Tedeschi’s interrogation section.” Zarven experienced a shudder. Tedeschi enjoyed his work with a fervor that reminded Zarven of a certain Senior Fanrohaust, long ago. “The worm will most likely die before it gives us anything worthwhile. Probably knows only what its group or cell leader shared with it.”

  Zarven sensed Ozer’s frustration, a clenched-fist tightening in the chest.

  “This was the work of our Coalition friends?”

  “Undoubtedly,” Zarven replied. “They either dropped in supplies with their troublemakers during that orbital attack or the Free States have opened up a new supply line.”

  “What are we going to do?” Ozer’s question was pointless, the product of mounting anxiety. He already knew the answer.

  “Find the worms and kill them, of course,” Zarven answered softly, with only a touch of reproach. Ozer was a solid, young officer, merely prone to rage that occasionally dulled higher thought. “Your Third Platoon found nothing?”

  “Nothing. Empty trails. The worms scattered quite thoroughly. And they don’t appear to have fled north.”

  “That tells us something, at least,” Zarven said, rising to his feet and brushing off the Fanrohaust medic. “They’re near; not too close, but near enough to be within striking distance of the region’s major installations.” Zarven glanced skyward, into the deepening twilight. “A shame our aerospace assets are so...nonexistent.”

  “Yes.” Ozer had turned, was looking downhill at the highway.

  Zarven did so, as well. He steeled his thoughts before finally turning his mind to the damage reports. Five Hausts and twice as many Fanrohausts were slain, along with the equivalent of a reinforced platoon of Minrohausts. A battle-car, a hovertank, two APCs, four six-wheeled haulers and various other transports smashed. One scout skimmer shot down and an assault skimmer grounded and seriously damaged. A scattering of worm Collaborators, driving vehicles or operating as orderlies, had given their selves for the greater Korvan glory, as well.

  Two thirds of the supplies meant to re-provision Outpost 9 had been destroyed or taken in the worst attack on Korvan forces in this region since the fighting had sputtered out around Mondanberg, nearly two standard years before.

  “At least,” Ozer was saying, “we hurt them.”

  “HaustCaptain,” Zarven replied, “if every engagement with the worms yields us a similar rate of exchange, we will lose this war in short order.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Devin Crozier slipped into the cave, feeling darkness press in around him, cool and cloaking. He brought up the rear of a tattered line of guerillas—the tight band pre-designated to follow his route when the main group scattered. He heard someone cough, a pained hiss, heard the scuffle of feet and equipment. Otherwise, a sullen, bruised silence hung over the holdouts.

  Crozier was glad they had gone down ahead of him. He wasn’t certain he could bear their collective gaze at his back, not now, feeling sick and filthy and tired, tired, tired beyond expression. It had been hard enough to look directly at them, their eyes full of shock and fear and the trust—that awful trust that he could get them through it, make it count, even after the drubbing they had taken.

  Noise began to grow below him and he knew they were close to the heart of the Station. A youth in smart-fibers and a helmet that looked just a hint too large stood back as the ambush party descended by him. He fingered his NA-17 with the eagerness of one who has never had to fire a weapon in anger. As he watched the veterans, his expression was a mixture of fear and fascination. When his gaze fell on Crozier he blinked, then stiffened in recognition and threw a salute made clumsy by the tight confines.

  Shit. Crozier flicked a half-smile that was more reflexive than pleasant.

  The small party emerged into the main corridor that had once served as the Station’s main entrance route. Crozier squinted in the glare of electrical lights.

  The area was hard to recognize as the musty warren of refugees it had been over three months before. The hall rang with the activity of a full staging area, guerillas in synthe-leathers gathered in knots and receiving weapons familiarization, uniformed partisans directing streams of newly-arrived refugees, lines of volunteers waiting for an issue of fresh smart-fibers.

  “Quite the layout,” Crozier murmured to himself, shocked at how far they’d already come.

  “Not too bad, considering the Korvans won’t be letting us assemble in the open any time soon,” growled a familiar voice at Crozier’s back.

  The smile was already across Crozier’s face by the time he turned to see Ro, no less genuine for being exhausted. “Well, it’s damned good to see you.”

  The Grak’s facial fur quivered and there was a flash of teeth—so hard to tell when they were smiling. “We got word you were coming in. Yours was the last team to return. It’s been nearly two weeks. We were beginning to wonder.”

  Crozier spat a gobbet of gritty saliva. “Korvan bastards are so damned thorough, so damned determined. Got scary a couple times, there.”

  “I should have gone.” Which was Ro’s way of saying Crozier shouldn’t have.

  Crozier grunted but didn’t directly meet the Grak’s gaze. He was too beat to have a Leadership Theory debate with Ro, right now. He was just glad to see the fuzzy being again, glad to be alive. He glanced about. A fatigue-clad guerrilla officer was seeing to Crozier’s battered team. There were a lot of loose ears around. He put a hand on Ro’s shoulder—was surprised when he actually had to lean into it for support.

  “Perhaps a quieter place?”

  “Of course,” Ro replied, moving close enough to Crozier to assist him without being obvious. “Would you like to clean up?”

  “Later.”

  The two made their way down into the depths of the Station. The sounds and light of the staging area faded quickly behind them, their surroundings becoming dark with a damp, cold smell of rock that hadn’t seen daylight in millennia. There were few signs of other people,
a reminder to Crozier that, while the Movement had grown, they were still quite few. For now.

  “You said the others are back?” Crozier asked.

  “Back and debriefed,” Ro replied.

  Crozier chewed his lip, felt his stomach tighten. Sometimes, when he blinked, he still saw the grainy afterimage of an anti-matter explosion behind his eyelids, could almost feel it aching in his bones. “Our losses?”

  Ro paused as they passed a guerilla sentinel lighting a cigarette back in the shadows. He leaned closer as they stepped out of earshot. “Twenty-eight’s the count so far. Another six missing, we’re guessing dead. Hoping so. I’d prefer death to Korvan interrogation.”

  “Too many,” Crozier forced himself to say. “Too many veterans, too much equipment left behind.”

  “You got the job done,” Ro said, his hand tapping against Crozier’s shoulder plate. “The convoy’s smashed.”

  “There’ll be another one,” Crozier replied before he could stop the bitter words. He looked down, a hand absently clawing at his beard. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to force the sick feeling down. No damned good thinking too much.

  Too bad they haven’t figured out an augmentation for a haunted conscience. Damned Korvans are ahead of us on that one, too.

  Time and the caves drifted by as Ro led Crozier down further, past more sentries, down into the installation, itself. Bright HoloScreen maps and Janotski awaited them in the command center. The crippled man and the young woman seated beside him were in fresh-looking Navy red overalls probably salvaged from the crew lockers.

  Janotski looked up from his console and turned his seat to face Crozier, straightening his posture and clearing his throat as he did so. The young woman took the cue and rose to attention behind him. She was perhaps fourteen.

  “Station Four, all systems nominal, sir,” Janotski said in a voice crisp with a formality he took obvious pride in. A hint of smile gleamed in his eyes. “Good to have you back, Major.”

  Crozier nodded with a grin that wasn’t entirely forced. “Thank you, both. At ease.” He turned to Ro. “You’ve been busy.”

  “The word’s getting around. Quietly, but it’s out. We see more every day. Lots of refugees, not much good for our purposes. We’re passing those on to the camps we’ve established further back in the mountains. They worry me. Too many of them for security’s sake and the Korvans could easily infiltrate.”

  “As long as we don’t bring them here. The Station’s security is critical.” Crozier felt his voice grow hard. “I’d sacrifice those camps if it meant keeping this place safe.” He couldn’t help but notice the console girl’s sudden blanching.

  “We’re not even bringing most of the trainees here, anymore,” Ro said. “Just the officers and the cadre.”

  “Yeah, what about our recruits?”

  “The quality differs with each influx. People promising to fight if we hide away their loved ones. Not a lot of training. We are seeing more veterans, though. Fragments of Defense Force units with some experience. Even a couple Coalition Regular Army vets. I’ve got the makings of a leadership core and a rudimentary training program. It takes time, though. And I’ve got to tell you, Devin; I’m not exactly...well-versed in any of this.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Crozier replied. The words felt lame and he felt the need to add, “We’re all facing a learning-curve, here. Not too much experience with assembling an army right under the noses of the Korvans.”

  He gave the Grak a pat on the arm. The motion brought on a swaying sensation. The sting of burns and minor injuries under week-old bandages and a lingering feverishness had robbed him of any rest he might have snatched between bouts of terror. He put his hands to the back of an unoccupied chair for support. Lurninari’s unforgiving pull ached in his joints.

  “You need rest,” Ro said softly.

  “I’m fine.” The words came out harsher than Crozier had intended.

  “Of course, you are.” Grak inflections were often hard to read, but the sarcasm was unmistakable.

  Crozier looked at him, saw the force behind his eyes and the slight bristling about his neck. He often forgot that Ro wasn’t human, and the Grak were sensitive about some curious things. He looked down, gave a sheepish nod. “All right. You’re probably right. I’ll be in my bunk if anyone needs me.”

  “The Movement can do without you for a few hours, Devin.”

  Crozier didn’t answer, was already trudging from the room.

  THE SOUND OF THE WATERFALL was delicious white noise erasing the need for senses, for thought. Cascading from a worn shelf of rock, its spray caught midafternoon sun in rainbow scintillation. An occasional breeze carried droplets of pinprick cool to chill the skin.

  Sandy smiled as she rolled over in the water and backstroked away from the falls, across the small pond, reveling in the relative oblivion. She ceased her strokes at one point to float with only her face above water, the sun warm on her cheeks as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the caress of the pond, the chance to feel clean, to not worry, not remember.

  There were other sounds, of course, and against her will she was starting to become aware of them. The voices of men and women—mostly women—conversing in tones hushed by habit, if not outright caution, the scrape of their feet and hands on rock, the giggles and occasional sharp squeals of children.

  Children.

  Sandy opened her eyes and became aware of her surroundings.

  The waterfall emptied into a narrow gorge that wound between towering walls of bleached sandstone, crowned with the dark, jagged lines of forest. Much of this region was a maze of such gorges, tight valleys, hollows, all hidden by the dense woods and the contours of the land. This particular spot lay in the shadow of the mountain that held the Station and had probably attracted the attention of its original crews.

  Groups of women and children congregated near the water’s edge, most in the tatters they had worn in whatever prior lives they’d had. The refugees’ eyes gleamed in the reflected sunlight and their faces lost some of the tight lines of perpetual wear. Perhaps they recalled picnics, hikes, youth, and a world not tearing itself to shreds.

  Sandy watched them, felt an ache deeper than bone, felt suddenly unreal.

  The kids edged into the water, chattering in small, high-pitched voices as their toes curled in the cold. One, a boy of possibly Eurasian descent whose lack of shirt displayed a frame gaunt with malnutrition, separated himself from the others. Sandy watched him follow the edge of the pond with his eyes on his reflection.

  One of the women called to him and he stopped. But he didn’t look at her. Instead, his gaze rose to meet Sandy’s, hollow and weary and aged beyond his few years. She could see what had been taken from him—parents, childhood, innocence—and felt an odd kinship.

  The woman who’d called the boy—ebony-skinned and painfully thin—came up behind him, cooing something into his ear that produced a smile. She picked him up and glanced towards Sandy. Something flashed in her eyes, not malice so much as recognition of what Sandy was: one of the partisans, the killers who would not let the war die.

  The surreal feeling intensified, surged and Sandy turned over and began swimming, had to get away.

  Sandy felt her strength ebb, could suddenly feel the aches, the bruises now turning shades of sickening yellow-brown across her arms, her back. Her lungs burned as her strokes became uneven. The creek beyond the pond had a slight current and she let it carry her. She tried to relax but the memories came crackling back.

  Sandy had been in her first firefight at seventeen. Since then, she had killed from treetops, from holes in the ground, from a few meters away. The convoy ambush had been her first exposure to the full fury of modern battle, the suddenness of it, the randomness of it. Images of fire and screaming shrapnel had visited her dreams with regularity since she’d returned to the Station, bringing cold sweats in the middle of the night.

  More knots of people sat along the tables of rock lining the creek. Sa
ndy glided by. Above, not easily discernible unless you knew what to look for, guerrilla sentries watched the sky from the surrounding heights.

  Geography and the near-disappearance of Korvan overhead surveillance meant it was fairly safe to come out here—perhaps necessary for the sanity of some—so long as somebody watched your back. And one of the first things every partisan and refugee learned here was how to disappear at the first hint of observation.

  A figure sat at the edge of the creek ahead. Sandy’s course carried her close. With a jolt she recognized Crozier’s stooped form and halted herself. He was shaving, dipping an anachronistic straight razor into a tin of soapy water, scraping, then rinsing it in the creek water. She noticed the chain about his neck and the gleam of the ring dangling from it and felt another jolt.

  Crozier noticed her and gave a subdued smile. “Afternoon, Sandy.”

  “Major.” Sandy remembered her loose attire, sleeveless shirt and boxer shorts, and felt self-conscious, both for what the damp fabric revealed and for how little there actually was to reveal. Arms wrapped around her chest in modest reflex.

  “Swim sounds like a good idea,” Crozier said, his eyes on a looking glass as he guided the razor across his neck. “Might try one myself, later.”

  Sandy found her mouth struck dumb, seemed only able to focus on Crozier, the ring and the fact that she was shivering in water that had previously been quite comfortable.

  He looked up at her again, frowned. “You all right?”

  “I didn’t know you were back,” she answered. “You were gone longer than the others. There was talk...”

  “Yeah...well, I made it,” Crozier said. “War isn’t through with me yet, I suppose. Though I’m certain some were hoping.”

  “I...wasn’t,” Sandy said without knowing why. She cleared her throat. “That you weren’t coming back, I mean.” Something propelled her to the edge of the rock upon which he sat. She leaned against it, folded her arms up in front of her. Her eyes went to the ring.