Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  An anti-orbital fusion battery. How could they have missed it?

  The first of the huge weapons had been established early in Lurinari’s colonial phase, the world’s only planetary-scale defense and mostly intended as a deterrent against piracy. Later, as the threat of war with the Korvans grew, the worms had increased the number of batteries, constructing enough to stand off against a Korvan strike force, long enough for Coalition reinforcements to arrive. But when the Korvan machine reached this place, there were no reinforcements to come to Lurinari’s aid and her defenses were pounded into slag from orbit.

  One battery was believed to have survived in the Free City States, outside the city of Defiance. It was rendered impotent by the fact that the worms dare not lower their mammoth deflector screens for fear of a Korvan nuke strike slipping through.

  But how could they not have known about this other one? How? They had been here seven years!

  “Tan-Ezatz?” a familiar voice called to her.

  Bakta’s calm tones, despite being forced over waves of turmoil, were a comfort. Tan-Ezatz replied, “I am here, friend.”

  “Whatever you need, you can have it,” he said in a rush. “Tell me how much and I’ll have it in the way in an hour.”

  Tan-Ezatz gave a mental grin despite herself. “It is good to feel your presence again, old friend. But that will not be necessary. At least, I don’t think so.”

  “What will you do?”

  Before she could answer, her AI pulsed an alert. The holographic screens before her flickered with white trails slashing across the false landscape from several points to the south, from Bakta’s front lines. The trails clawed for the glowing mountain in the Coreals, long range bombardment rockets, some assuredly tipped with tactical nukes.

  Bakta was already hollering for the commanders to cease fire, but there was no bringing back the fired birds.

  A new alarm blatted and the mountain blinked a tight pattern. The trails dissolved in glimmers of holographic distortion. The fusion battery had fired again, had ripped the missiles from the sky with careless ease.

  Another blat as more trails leapt for the Coreals, this time from Fort Ranzac. The result was the same, only this time the skies over Mondanberg shook with a horrifying thunder that rattled through the headquarters building. Tan-Ezatz was ready to pounce, but Dramen-Singlo was already snarling at his subordinates.

  “No use, damn them,” Bakta growled through the Awareness. “They’re wasting what we do not have in abundance.”

  “Revenge,” Tan-Ezatz replied through a growing haze of pain and weariness. She was old and tired and wanted it all to go away. “They want revenge.”

  “I can have a Ground Strike Division in Mondanberg in two days,” Bakta said with fire behind his words. “They can be sweeping the Coreals clean in a week.”

  “No,” she croaked. She paused, marshaled her strength, and said with force, “No. We cannot disrupt the offensive. We must press on.”

  “HaustMarshal, you cannot expect our senior commanders to go along with the timetable now. Not after this. They will want blood.”

  “And they will have it!” Resolve flowed back into Tan-Ezatz, fueled by some of the Ubermind’s last words. “But I will see to these upstarts. I will! You, my friend, must continue with the plan. And you must drive the others to do so. We have to break the Free City States. We have to have all of Lurinari.”

  Tan-Ezatz tasted Bakta’s doubts and cursed inwardly. “I was in commune with the Ubermind, Bakta,” she went on. “I was speaking with It in Its last moments. We are running out of time. We need a victory over this planet soon—a complete victory—if we are to be of any service to our people, at all. You are our last—” she swallowed the words following “—our best chance for a swift, decisive battle. Do you understand me, Bakta?”

  “I am...I think so, my Haust.” Uncertainty rumbled behind his words.

  “I need you to know so. And I need you to make the others understand, because we cannot do this without them. Can you do this? For our people? Our cause? For me?”

  “I will.” Steel in his words, now.

  “Good. Leave these filth in the Coreals to me, then. I will scour every garrison in the Valley and send them in, I will stomp out Dramen-Singlo’s excuses and I will turn Zarven loose. There will be nowhere for the worms to hide.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Station shuddered as the anti-orbital gun fired again, slashing the horizon clean of more incoming missiles, this time from Korvans somewhere to the north. Dust drifted free of blastisteel panels and lights flickered slightly. The holograms showed the missiles detonated hundreds of kilometers distant.

  Sandy took a deep breath and took in the faint smell of scorched electronics. She was surprised to be alive to smell anything, at all.

  She watched Crozier. He’d let go of her hand and was pacing behind Janotski, who’d lit and smoked a half dozen cigarettes since the first blast and had filled much of the cramped chamber with haze. The Station officers watched Crozier with drawn expressions, but he did not seem to know they were there. He didn’t make eye contact with her, either. His face looked frozen and distant.

  The alarm sounded again and more Korvan missiles streaked for the Station. Sandy felt her guts knot, felt a sheen of perspiration prickle across her forehead. There were fewer projectiles this time but they got much closer, hugging the surface. The lights dimmed, the Station shook, and dust drifted free as the huge weapon pounded the heavens clean with contemptuous ease.

  “Mister Janotski, you may want to see this,” said the polite, male voice of the Station AI. Sandy hadn’t heard the computer speak since she’d been here, had heard that the old man kept the thing set to minimum because he couldn’t stand it, wanted to do everything himself.

  A small schematic drew itself across the map near the point where this most recent Korvan attack had been pulverized, the image clearly a missile, but blunt and almost clumsy looking.

  Janotski grunted. “Those weren’t all bombardment missiles. Half of them were drones, some sort of surveillance type.”

  Crozier nodded, staring at the image. “They’ll begin feeling us out, see what kind of range we’ve got, see how close they can get.” He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s starting.”

  He turned and strolled from the chamber without a word. The Station commanders glanced at each other, began to murmur amongst themselves. Sandy looked at them. You’re just going to let him go? Annoyed, she strode by them, out into the corridor.

  Crozier was proceeding through the shadows at a leisurely pace. She caught up to him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Not much I can do in there, now,” Crozier replied.

  “Devin, you should say something to them. Give an order. Something.”

  “In time, Sandy. I will in time.”

  “In time...Devin, they’re scared.” She put a hand on his arm to stop his pacing. “I’m scared.”

  He turned to look at her and she was surprised to see the coiling tension gone from his face, as if he had relaxed. The bleakness of his voice was a frightening contrast. “They should be. Do you know what’s going to happen now?”

  She had her mouth open to reply, but shut it as realization swept in through her like a blizzard. She tried to meet his eyes, but couldn’t. She wanted to see reassurance there, a warm light telling her everything would be all right. Instead, there was only the cold.

  Crozier looked away, began pacing again. “On Weyland IV, after a particularly heavy engagement, we’d occasionally find a badly wounded Korvan whose cyberware had been scrambled so much he couldn’t suicide and his superiors couldn’t do it for him remotely. We would take it and...the boys would do things it. The other Korvans, its comrades, would sense what we were doing. It was like throwing starved wolves red meat. No matter how badly we’d hammered them before, they’d always come on again, take the bait, couldn’t stand their fellow’s torment.”

&
nbsp; Crozier stopped, put a hand out and leaned against a wall. He glanced over his shoulder at a sentry in the corridor who was pretending very hard not to notice the two of them. Sandy stepped close to Crozier, wasn’t sure she wanted to hear more but knowing she had to. For him.

  “It was times like those, I’d get this bad feeling,” Crozier said. “Like we’d escalated things too far somehow. The Korvans would fight on to the last. That’s why we did it, to weaken them.” He looked at her, a smile growing, something fatalistic in his eyes, but something defiant flaring up, too. He seemed to shake himself. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter. The die is cast and we’ve got work to do.”

  “Devin...”

  Crozier turned and headed back the way of the command center. The officers were there, saw him coming and perked up instantly, the light coming into their eyes as they saw his smile, the determined stance. Sandy strode at his side, watching him, the lines around his eyes, alert for the melancholy she had watched growing in him some time.

  Just short of the command chamber, Crozier noticed her scrutiny, paused, and whispered, “I know what you’re thinking, Sandy, and it’s not necessary. But, thank you.”

  He stopped before the officers, arms folding in front of his chest. “Well. Enough of this, watching fireworks. The Korvans wanted a stand-up fight. Now they’ve got it. Pass the word along. We need everyone and there isn’t a lot of time.”

  The Movement was going to war.

  BOOK IV

  FALL

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tan-Ezatz watched Kavanaugh through one of the interrogators’ eyes. Color had drained from the former worm Governor’s complexion. His features had drawn tight in a mask of agony where drops of sweat mingled with rivulets of blood. He moaned as the interrogators let up on him.

  “I must say, I’m impressed,” Kavelton said to Tan-Ezatz.

  “Yes, there is strength there I had not guessed at,” she replied.

  Tan-Ezatz was certainly not squeamish, but the interrogation had given birth to a streak of nausea in her. Kavanaugh was strapped to a chair, reclined and naked under a harsh white light in a room devoid of detail, save the two Korvan interrogators and their hover tray of tools. They had started with his feet, angling an overhead mirror so he could watch as they plied their trade. His legs up to the knees had been dissected with an anatomy student’s precision. Tatters of muscle and fat quivered pinkish-red. Exposed bone gleamed yellow-white.

  The interrogators used scalpels, saws, and drills in their ministrations, switching to modern equipment only to prevent unnecessary blood loss and to keep him from expiring prematurely. It was the tools—crusty with dried blood and gristle—that brought out the illness.

  “I believe he is in a receptive state,” the senior of the two interrogators said. His harmonic was clear of emotion, only an artisan’s focus on task. It was enough to make him terrible. “Would the HaustMarshal like a few words?”

  “Certainly.” Tan-Ezatz, followed by Kavelton, stepped through a door and into the torture chamber.

  Kavanaugh’s pain-glazed eyes brightened upon her entry, a panicked animal’s sighting of salvation. “My Haust! My Haust, I beg of you! Please...I knew nothing!”

  Tan-Ezatz stepped to his side, working hard not to wrinkle her nose at the stench of ejecta, blood, and worm sweat-stink. “Forgive us if we find your ignorance hard to believe.”

  “I promise you, I was not...” Kavanaugh gagged on something. The junior interrogator stood by with tools, should suctioning vomit become necessary. “...I was not...privy to security secrets...I swear...”

  “Please. You were Lieutenant Governor of the entire planet and you had no idea of its Defense Force deployments?”

  “I was...” More gagging. “The Governor, he...didn’t share with me or others... was a secretive man...he was paranoid...please, Haust...”

  “You haven’t shared everything with me. You’ve been secretive.” Tan-Ezatz leaned close, reached out and touched Kavanaugh’s forehead lightly. “I believe, even now, you keep things from us in this skull.”

  “No! You have to believe! For the love of God, you have to!” He squirmed in his restraints. The shreds of his legs began to bleed anew.

  “HaustMarshal,” said the senior interrogator, “I feel we have reached a decisive point. The subject has endured an impressive amount of attention. I don’t think further application of the current method will yield the results you desire.”

  “Maybe there isn’t more,” Kavelton said.

  “There has to be,” Tan-Ezatz answered with a snap.

  “We can go with the alternative method,” the interrogator suggested. “The other subject has been prepared.”

  “Do it.”

  The interrogator gave a mental nudge and the wall beside Kavanaugh slid back. Strapped into another chair and prepared like her husband was Kavanaugh’s wife. Gone from her face was the defiance Tan-Ezatz had noted months ago. Tight-skinned terror lay in its place.

  “Mitchell!” She wailed. “Jesus Christ, Mitchell, please! Tell them what they want!”

  Kavanaugh’s lips began to tremble and his eyes darted across the interrogators, who abandoned him to circle his wife. The senior of the two kneeled at her side, touching a scalpel to her toes while looking at Kavanaugh.

  “How did you feel about the feet?” the interrogator asked him. “Do you think she would respond more favorably?”

  Kavanaugh’s breathing accelerated. “I told you, you monsters! I don’t know anything!”

  “No? Perhaps the face, then?” The interrogator stood, resting his free hand on the top of Kavanaugh’s wife’s head while placing the blade on her cheek. He said to his companion, “The density of nerves in the facial area and worm identity issues surrounding the state of their features offer us a wide variety of opportunities...”

  “Mitchell...”

  “Goddammit! There is no more! I don’t know anymore!”

  “Mitchell!!!”

  The wife’s pleas disintegrated in a long, shrill scream that filled the chamber as the interrogator’s blade carved a crimson line across her face. Kavanaugh’s cries merged into hers.

  Tan-Ezatz winced as the noise became a recollection of Tzarinta’s death scream. “I think I’ve seen enough. Report your findings to me when you are done.” She turned and strode from the room with Kavelton trailing.

  “A pity there isn’t an easier way,” Kavelton said as the two of them stepped into a lift bound for Tan-Ezatz’s chambers.

  “Yes. Ironic, after a fashion. We have perfected a society whose thoughts and emotions are linked by technology, and yet we can’t penetrate a single mind born outside the touch of the Awareness. I fear we won’t have all the answers until this worm uprising in the Coreals is smashed.”

  ZARVEN SAT IN THE COMMAND center of Outpost 9, his eyes on a holographic map of the region surrounding the worm Station, known locally as the Cedar Valley. He issued a command and eight icons blinked into existence, denoting long range recon teams. They were four-man units—mostly from Ozer’s A Company, who possessed the highest percentage of specialists—hauling sensor gear and extra surveillance drones.

  “We’ll find them,” Ozer said across the Awareness. He and the rest of A Company followed behind the teams, moving due south from Outpost 9 toward what the map labeled Rose Lake. The rest of the 18th Battalion and the main body of Task Force Negator would leave from assembly points at the Outpost and from Teshima in twelve hours. Ozer and his teams had a two-day start on them.

  “I have no doubt,” Zarven replied. “You are authorized to use drones at a prodigal rate. I want there to be no doubt of the worm positions.”

  “I understand.” Ozer’s words held the faintest hint of anxiety as he cut the connection.

  There would be no surprise. Ozer and his teams had an even chance of being discovered by the worms, rather than the other way around. The entire operation had that feel, of stumbling around in the dark with only the worm Station as a defini
te guide.

  Zarven took some comfort in the size of the Korvan force. Task Force Negator consisted of four battalions, the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth of the 10th Ground Strike Division and his own 18th Special Commandos, all told, numbering over three thousand troops. This didn’t take into account the battalion of Collaborator Militia acting in support roles as transport and logistics. It was the largest force the Korvans had fielded in the Valley since its fall three years before and Zarven finally saw the tools in place to smash the worm uprising.

  But if the arrayed might gave him comfort, its leadership gave him dread. Dramen-Singlo, as District commander, had overall operational command. No surprises, there. But he had taken the operation as an excuse to Ascend one of his staff lickspittles, a now-HaustBrigadier, Rovan.

  Zarven felt the old chip on his shoulder ache as he wondered what favors the Rovan genotype now owed Dramen-Singlo or who on Homeworld the politicking was meant to please. Dammit, if these fools would just fight the war! And Zarven, who had been slogging away in this forgotten corner of hell, who knew it better than anyone, was left with only his Commandos. What I could do with the power we now have...

  “Thinking great thoughts, Zarven?”

  Zarven was momentarily startled by Tan-Ezatz’s presence. He recovered quickly. “No. Thinking of stolen thunder.”

  “Ah. Still pouting, I see.”

  “Lamenting the decision to place a Korvan in tactical command who’s never led anything greater than a platoon in action before being sent off to...school, was it?”

  “The final decision for Rovan’s Ascendence was mine to make, HaustColonel,” Tan-Ezatz said with enough reproach to sting. “And I think you will find yourself pleasantly surprised with him. He has some remarkable theories on cracking fortified positions where air support is not practical—something of immediate application to our current situation.”