Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  Tubing had swallowed much of his torso and the skin where cybernetic met flesh was wet with sores and infection, so poorly mated as to be the Invader equivalent of a joke. The creature was yellow with misery and illness and etched across his forehead with laser perfection was the word SPY.

  “No, thank you,” Sandy replied softly, could not meet the watery, feverish eyes.

  She looked toward the Invaders again. More whores joined them from upstairs, forced laughter, forced gaiety ringing in the damp air. Hands—sharp, gleaming fingernails—pawed and the Invaders began to respond, their voices soft, deceptively weak-sounding.

  They were older, would possess some rank. Sandy had noticed that long ago; the younger Invaders didn’t seem terribly interested in things—pleasures—of a human sort, seemed caught up in some purity ideal. But the older ones took what amusement came, sometimes with ferocious energy.

  A droplet of sweat trickled into her lips, the salty taste of revulsion and building terror. Memories, cloudy like the awful beer in this place, filled her vision. The camps, the horrors, the aging Invader commandants with the darting eyes and sadistic gleam. She blinked away the thoughts, focused.

  Then felt a jolt of panic.

  One of the Invaders was watching her. A whore straddled him and was whispering something in his ear, but his silver-gray eyes remained on Sandy. She felt her innards wind up and cramp, felt her breath stolen. She tore her gaze away, stared at the gouged surface of the bar.

  Her heart beat with heavy, leaping pulses and her limbs went light. What the hell had she been thinking? She didn’t need to be here! And the Invaders—the damned, super-intelligent, super-thorough monsters—could spot her easily, could smell her fear, see it in her movements with their computerized senses.

  What had she been thinking?

  She turned slowly to look back at the Invaders, her hand moving in her baggy sleeve, feeling for the holdout pistol—security in this place was a joke. The filth she had allowed to accumulate on her face felt sticky-gritty. She wiped stinging dampness from her eyes with her free hand.

  And saw Cynthia coming down from upstairs. Her hair was pinned away from her face with imitation mother-of-pearl clasps and streaked with fluorescent pink dye, something that seemed to catch the Invader eye. Her lips were colored to match and lined in red-black, contrasting ghastly pale skin. Someone spoke from upstairs and Cynthia paused, looked up and flashed a smile, for an instant almost seeming the beautiful young woman she had been.

  Relief rushed through Sandy at the sight of her sister, then coupled with revulsion rising from her core. How did she do it? How did Cynthia tolerate the intolerable, the violation? She must hate them even more than I do...

  Cynthia reached the bottom of the stairs, rounded the ornate banister and strode across the room. Her path would carry her by the bar, straight for the door. She moved with fluid grace, concealing haste with strut and attitude that did not appear at all forced. She drew near Sandy and her eyes flicked toward her, a look that said she was all right, wasn’t hurt. The tiniest quirk of her lips sent another signal: Let’s get the hell out of here.

  Sandy started to get up.

  A leg shot up and slammed into the underside of the bar hard enough to splinter thin wood. Cynthia froze. Her features acquiring an even more sickly hue as she saw her way barred. Her gaze went down, afraid to look at Sandy, afraid that their plot might be exposed.

  The Invader with the silver-gray eyes reached out and touched Cynthia’s arm. At the same time, his other arm thrust the whore on his lap to the floor with a wounded grunt. His fingers went around Cynthia’s elbow but did not claw, did not grip, simply guided her to him. He retracted his leg and sat her on it, his other hand going to her knee. The motions were quite swift but done with such care as to appear slow motion. He leaned her to him, began whispering into her hair. Her eyes remained on Sandy, quivering.

  Sandy’s pistol itched where it was strapped to her forearm.

  Cynthia’s face changed, the terror leaving her gaze, the color of her skin improving. A smile parted her lips and a sound issued that was not quite a laugh. She put a hand to the Invader’s face and began stroking his cheek.

  Sandy’s stomach squeezed into a nauseated lump. Cynthia nodded to her, disguising the motion as leaning into the Invader’s attentions. The signal was as unmistakable as it was unacceptable.

  Get out, now.

  Sandy wanted to shake her head, wanted to refuse. But the eyes of all the Invaders were suddenly on her, as if one gaze. One in the back corner was rising. Sandy felt herself take a step back, as if forced.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  Sandy looked at the bartender, the horrible joke in flesh doomed to metal and plastic non-death. In his words she felt something more, a warning, a plea. Please go, get out, don’t let them get you, too...

  “Thank you...no, I’ll be leaving now.”

  Sandy turned and strode for the door, tensing with each step as she expected a flurry of gunfire. The light of outside beckoned. She quickened her pace, somehow managed not to scramble for the exit. She emerged, squinting, into the sunlight. The stooped, battered buildings of Forlorn greeted her.

  She didn’t pause to breathe a sigh of relief, quickened her pace, instead, and weaved through pedestrians, wagons and the odd horse, to cross the street. Only at the opposite curb did she throw a look back. No pursuit. She continued along the crumbling sidewalk, kept her face down as an armored hovercar glided by. She saw an alley she recognized, turned in and began to run, breathing hard with pent-up adrenaline.

  Whatever you’ve got planned for getting out of there, Cynn, please, please hurry it the hell up...

  VORSH LAY BELLY-DOWN on the roof of a three-story building in what locals felt was one of the worst neighborhoods in Teshima and watched the narrow street below him. The sun beat across his back in heavy waves. When he closed his eyes, he could see himself in the sultry air of the caves of Shmal. Only the scent of sticky, bubbling tar in the cracks of the roof dispelled the image.

  Worthy shifted beside him, propped up on his elbows and scanning the city around them through a battered pair of digital binoculars. His face and bare forehead glistened with sweat and patches of moisture plastered his shirt to his back. He was in a worn-looking long-sleeved shirt and trousers of an olive drab common amongst civilians in this area. Only the binoculars and the spindly headset he wore gave away his more malevolent purpose.

  Vorsh looked across the town. Grak spires in the near distance pierced the hazy blue sky—supposedly the design was meant to remind the race of its arboreal origins. The closer buildings were a mix of crumbling human brick and even more decrepit Shmali domes. Most would be deserted, left so since the Korvans swept the troublemakers out of Teshima.

  The area’s remaining inhabitants were the sort who didn’t want to be found. The more nefarious denizens occasionally sallied forth and wrought havoc on the rest of the city, inspiring fear even Korvan occupation hadn’t. So, Collaborator Militia columns routinely swept the district, ferreted out anyone careless enough to be caught, and handed them over to their Korvan benefactors as “suspicious elements”.

  A being could disappear quite nicely in a place such as this—part of the reason the partisans had infiltrated here. Vorsh found the concept comforting.

  “Acknowledged,” Worthy said into his headset, his body going tense. “We’ll be ready.”

  “They’re on their way?”

  Worthy nodded, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. “Six cars—two of them armored—and two trucks. Maybe three dozen men.”

  Against eight guerillas. Three two-man teams pulled bags forward across the rooftop, opened them and began assembling their weapons, the light cold-gas launchers that were becoming so popular amongst the holdouts.

  Vorsh unzipped the duffel bag behind him and pulled out his blastrifle, his fingers going to the well-remembered pistol grip. He watched as Worthy rolled up his sleeve, exposing t
he computer pad strapped to his forearm. His fingers moved across it, keying a row of yellow lights to life—charges primed and ready.

  “I hate this,” Worthy said in a hoarse whisper. “This always feels dirty.”

  Vorsh put on a headset similar to Worthy’s except with a visor that duplicated the functionality of a battle helmet. He leaned close to the edge of the roof and took aim at the stripped frame of an automobile left on one side of the street. A targeting dot lit across his vision. He panned slowly across the narrow street, noting garbage cans, trash on the pavement, old posters fluttering in the breeze, an animal rummaging in a rusted-out dumpster.

  “You hate what?” Vorsh finally asked in response.

  “Killing our own kind.”

  Vorsh snorted. “Collaborators aren’t my kind. Don’t know about you.”

  “It’s not like it is with the Korvans. They’re people.”

  “They’re parasites. They’re worse than the Korvans.” Vorsh looked at Worthy, flashed him a wicked smile. “Doesn’t matter, really. I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way.”

  Worthy licked sweat from his lips. He looked about to say something but a crackle from his headset stopped him. He scrambled forward on hands and knees to the edge of the roof beside Vorsh saying, “Three minutes.”

  Vorsh took aim at the street again, laying the firing dot on a trash can directly below and across from him. He savored the almost electric thrill of the trigger pad under his finger, the buttplate against his shoulder, the forestock against his cheek. The current of excitement danced down his chest, trickling through his torso into his crotch.

  Beside him, Worthy was breathing hard. Vorsh spared a second to glance over. The human watched the building tops with the binoculars but was having a hard time holding them steady in shaking hands. Vorsh’s gaze went to the remote detonator pad on Worthy’s forearm. He reached out and touched his shoulder. Worthy lowered the binoculars and looked at him.

  “Easy.”

  Worthy licked his lips again. “I’m fine. I’ve got it.”

  Vorsh nodded but felt his face tighten into a grim expression. “You wait and fire those charges right, this time, Worthy. I’m telling you; you keep your shit together.” Vorsh took his hand off the human and looked back down the sights of his weapon, calm again after the sudden surge of rage.

  “Because you don’t ever want to be someone who gets in my way.”

  “DAMN THEM, THEY’RE early,” Crozier said between breaths as he scrambled through a snagging tangle of spine-bush. Fabric caught and ripped, thorns dragged and stung across exposed skin. He swore. The sound of the train filled the distance, the rumble and squeal of tons of metal across track.

  “Don’t know why you’re surprised,” Ro growled, trailing behind. He hissed a Grakan curse as a branch Crozier had dragged with him snapped back in his face.

  The forest thinned ahead, late afternoon sunlight glaring through. Crozier went to his hands and knees and crawled the remainder of the way to the wood’s edge, finally coming to a stop at the eroded crest of a rise looking down across what had once been the Low Coreal Rail Line, before being enslaved to the Korvans’ purpose.

  Ro settled beside him. The Grak had sworn he wouldn’t allow Crozier into the field like this again without taking him along. Ro’s purpose had probably been to encourage him to stay behind. The result had been, instead, the concentration of too much of the Movement’s leadership at an ambush that required neither one’s expertise.

  Perhaps Ro and I need to have another talk, Crozier thought. He grimaced, then chided himself. Perhaps Ro’s right...I don’t have to be here...probably pissing the Company Leader off, probably thinks we don’t have faith in him...

  Crozier ran a hand across his rough face, slick with perspiration. Summer in the Coreal Valley brought terrible heat and suffocating humidity, especially in these lowlands west of Teshima. Sunlight directly across his back turned Crozier’s gear and armor into a soaked, crushing load. He glanced at Ro, who was adjusting his helm, his fur flat against his face and gleaming with lather. His tongue flicked out, pink-white and pulsing with each swift breath.

  The woods around them rippled as the partisan company scurried into position. No time to dig in, do this right. Damn. It was supposed to have been an evening train, carrying supplies all the way from Mondanberg. The guerillas had gotten off to a slow start last night and were slowed even more by wretched terrain and this cursed Lurinari undergrowth.

  The train clattered closer, not yet visible, its engine a throb in the steamy air.

  Crozier lowered his visor, looked west, and dialed up the magnification. A trio of holdouts worked at the tracks, spades flashing in the sun. They finished and gestured with swinging arms. A fourth guerilla trotted up from the tree line, carrying a bundle that he laid into the hole his comrades had dug. Hurry. The shovels began to work again, dirt and gravel going back over the mine. The air shimmered over glinting rails, nearly hot enough to singe. Hurry up.

  Crozier wiped sweat from his lips. This wasn’t going to be good enough, was too obvious, too hasty. He gave his helm AI a command and a holographic map lit across a quadrant of his vision.

  The train showed as a crimson serpent worming its way eastward, still a few kilometers away. There was no sign of Korvan vehicles, no telltale fusion signatures. No telling what kind of sensor package they might—would—have mounted on the engine, though. No telling if a flight of assault skimmers lurked somewhere just out of range of the helmet’s passive sensors, either.

  The stick figures of the partisans scattered for the rise south of the tracks, up the steep incline and fading into the trees. Korvans will probably pick up their damned boot prints...oh yeah...this isn’t obvious, not at all...

  Crozier glanced at Ro. The Grak was checking his weapon. He noticed the attention and flashed an encouraging clench of fangs. No thoughts, no advice. No last-moment comfort. Ro was here to fight.

  I should call it off, Crozier thought. His body felt rubbery, sickeningly uncertain. They should let this one go, just stay put, hide while it rides by, then get the hell out. Too little prep, this time, too much risk. Early train, bad ground, bad feeling in his stomach.

  But the mine was already planted. No way to go down there a dig it out, not now. Everyone was in place. And this is a new company, fairly green. They need this, the fat, easy kill, the experience. The Movement needs this, to maintain the string of successes, the strengthening morale.

  I need this.

  Crozier ground his teeth with the decision and felt the chill build in his nerves.

  SANDY PULLED STINGING breaths into her lungs as she vaulted up the stairs of an abandoned hotel, a block and a half from the brothel. She waved a hand to clear a streamer of cobweb out of her way, missed a step in the process and went down in a cursing tangle, skinning both shins. She heard wood groan under footsteps above her and froze.

  “You all right?”

  She looked up at a teenaged girl aiming a blastrifle down the stairwell. Sandy nodded and got to her feet. She gestured back down the way she had come. “Check the front. Quickly! Make sure I wasn’t followed.”

  She and the girl squirmed by each other and Sandy made her way upstairs. Five men waited in an empty room on the fourth floor with the drywalls torn out and scattered across the floor and shutters over the windows. They looked up—a mixture of startlement and relief—as she strode in. My squad.

  Corporal Sten, a straw-blonde man with a long neck and bird-like posture, had been watching through a window with digital binoculars. He smiled as she kneeled beside him. The expression became a frown as he realized she was alone. “Cynthia?”

  “Delayed,” Sandy answered sharply. “Give me those.” She snatched Sten’s binoculars and peered between the shutters. Dialing up the magnification brought the brothel into focus, easily seen over squat Shmali domes and one-story shops and houses.

  “Delayed? That’s no good, no good, at all. What do we do?”

&nbs
p; “We give her time,” Sandy replied.

  She felt the tension of the others rise behind her, like a heater turned up. Three of the five men were older than her, were probably wondering why the hell someone put this neurotic little witch in charge. Sandy blinked sweat from her eye, tried to blink the pressure away. This was leadership. She no longer had just her nightmares to worry about, but her teams’, too.

  The front door to the brothel opened and Sandy’s heart leapt. But it was a Collaborator officer. A minute dragged by. Sandy set the binoculars down for a moment, rubbed the bridge of her nose. She looked through them again. A pair of drunk Collaborators was entering the building, arm-in-arm.

  “How long are we gonna sit here?”

  “Longer.”

  “Long enough for the Screwheads to trace us here?” Sten’s voice was tight with the beginning of nerves.

  “As long as it takes,” Sandy answered. She looked at him suddenly. “Give me the detonator.”

  Sten frowned, moved away from her. Sandy grabbed his forearm, pulled back his sleeve and undid the computer pad clasped there. Sten didn’t resist but the struggle made her feel stupid, embarrassed.

  “She’s my sister, Corporal,” Sandy said after checking the pad to make certain the charges were armed but locked. She looked back through the binoculars, said almost under her breath, “So we wait.”

  Sten murmured something Sandy didn’t bother to hear.

  Minutes slid by in the syrupy hot agony of the room. The teenager reported all clear up front. Sandy sent Sten to double check and was relieved for his brief absence. The others shifted uncomfortably, sullen and nervous.