Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  “How long are we going to let them get chewed up like this? Ozer asked.

  Zarven shook the Fanrohaust’s demise away. “The worms think they’ve got us, think we’re getting desperate. We throw everyone into this now and they might disengage and run. A little longer and we’ll bag them all.”

  “At least let me put in the rest of A Company.” Ozer pressed. “This is getting hard on the troops.”

  “Very well,” Zarven conceded.

  Ozer and A Company’s entrance into the fight brought on a three-fold increase in the cacophony of the battle. Probably more realistic, that way. The worms wouldn’t believe the Korvans could just leave their people dangling out in the fire alone for bait.

  Zarven tried not to feel like a villain as the struggle ground on around him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Crozier ran a hand across his stubbled jaw as he stared at shifting, flashing holograms. A tremor passed through the command chamber, lights flickering in its wake as the Station continued its duel with the Korvan artillery. His vision began to take on the telltale fuzziness of sleep-deprivation. He picked up a stimulant patch, peeled off the silvery backing and pressed it to his wrist. A rush of electric clarity followed tickles of cold on his skin. Fatigue withdrew to the back of his skull in a tight bead of white pain.

  An icon blinked from the north. Another message coming in from Choson. Her communiques had been arriving with increasing frequency—this would be the fourth in the last hour—in contrast to Hrangar’s occasional stoic bursts, saying he was holding on.

  What the hell is going on up there? A wave of cold rushed through him as he read.

  “KORVAN MOVEMENTS CONFIRMED TO NORTH, EAST OF ROSE LAKE. SCOUTS SPOTTED, MAIN FORCE NOT FAR BEHIND. RIGHT FLANK WILL BE COMPROMISED WITHIN HOURS. REQUEST PERMISSION TO EXECUTE CONTINGENCY FALLBACK PLAN ONE. WILL LEAVE REARGUARDS BUT WILL NEED HEAVY MORTAR SUPPORT TO COVER WITHDRAWAL. DO I HAVE YOUR PERMISSION?—CHOSON”

  “Shit,” Janotski swore as he read the words from his seat at Crozier’s side.

  “Bound to happen,” Crozier said, annoyed at the old man. Panic was like dry kindling waiting for a spark, and the young girls manning the consoles were looking brittle enough. “It’s a big valley. Lot of ground to cover. Show me what’s happening with that Korvan northern prong.”

  The map shifted perspectives to the crimson blocks snaking through the Coreals well to the northeast of the fight. A lone blue icon barred their way. The Korvans had pushed through abandoned refugee campsites the day before and came into contact with partisan ambush teams. The guerrillas had bloodied the Korvan noses and fallen back. This process had been repeated twice more since and the northern prong’s progress had ground down to a terran snail’s pace.

  The escape routes to the east remained open. For the moment.

  “At least something’s going right,” Crozier said in a growl. “Show me Contingency Fallback Plan One.”

  Blue icons shifted at the command, the arch of the Movement’s line bowing backwards as the companies of the partisan Group North came to rest astride ridges directly north of the Station. That left the lines stretched thin between Group North and Group South. Hrangar had reserve companies in place building up a second line of defense along a ridge running parallel to Cedar Creek. With enough artillery to pin the Korvans down, the Grak Group Leader should be able to pull back to this line and tighten up with Group North’s re-deployment.

  Crozier’s gaze wandered to the tables in the corner of the hologram. Casualty figures could not, in the confusion, be deemed reliable. Assuming some variance, the Movement had taken roughly seventeen percent casualties, nearly a third of those desertions. In the mess of a re-deployment under fire, those desertions were certain to double, maybe even triple, guerrillas having faced the hardest fight of their lives deciding to cut their losses and make off with their loot and gear.

  No help for it.

  “Send to Choson, ‘Permission given for Contingency One. Maximum artillery authorized to cover withdrawal. Critical that your left flank companies maintain contact with Group South’s right flank units. Begin fallback immediately.’”

  Crozier waited for his orders to be transcribed and transmitted. “Send to Hrangar, ‘Group North about to be flanked. Contingency Fallback One in effect. Pull back to your second line. Artillery will pin Korvans down. Wait for mortars to begin. Maintain contact with Group North as you withdraw.’”

  Crozier looked at the readout in the corner of the hologram again. The Movement artillery section lay in hollows around the Station, medium and heavy automortar pods, pitifully outnumbered by their Korvan counterparts. Their expenditures had been extreme, over half their ordnance burned off already.

  The computer projected that two-thirds of what remained would be required for what he had in mind. Wincing away a building headache, he touched the hologram, poised to authorize the fire missions that would be communicated to the artillery section and transmitted into bloody action.

  How much delay to give Choson and Hrangar to organize the retreat? Minutes, seconds mattered with the Korvans ready to fold the right flank. Crozier squeezed his eyes shut. The battle felt like a slippery thing, thrashing to pull free of his grasp.

  “Fifteen-minute delay, then send fire missions,” he told the computer. The machine—its voice module disabled again to Janotski’s preference—blinked a cold acknowledgment. Crozier would have preferred the AI’s calm voice.

  LACK OF AN OVERCAST to hold heat close to the surface at night had allowed temperatures to plummet and now the ground began to freeze, a fact Sandy lamented as she shoveled out a new fighting hole. Her hands ached and stung with each lunge into the stubborn earth and her lungs burned in the frigid, dry air. Striking a rock sent a jolt of pain into her wrist and she finally gave in to the fear, exhaustion and rage and hurled her spade aside with a curse.

  The stillness of the air mocked her. In the near distance to the west, the flash and rumble of battle prowled up and down the partisan-held ridges like a beast behind a fence line. Around her in the weak starlight echoed the metallic hack of entrenching tools and an occasional oath foul enough to match hers.

  Her company had been withdrawn east to a slightly higher, but more rocky and treacherous string of hills. They and others had been set to digging almost immediately and the intent had become clear to all quite quickly; they were building a second line of defenses for their fellows to fall back into.

  Pushed back.

  Sandy pulled herself from her hole and scrambled a few meters to where she had last left Sten. The corporal leaned against a boulder beside the rifle pit he’d just finished with his gear stripped off, looking remarkably unfazed by the cold in only fatigues and synthe-leathers. He noticed her and flicked a grin through a puff of cigarette smoke.

  “You look shitty,” he said.

  “Yeah, well there hasn’t been a whole lot of time to see to my looks,” she replied, sitting down beside him. She plucked the cigarette from his finger and took a warm, soothing drag.

  He swore under his breath and took it back. “What’s the word?”

  “Anders says this is our spot.” She grinned at him. “You actually get to have the hole you’ve been burying yourself in.”

  Sten glanced around, nodding in his abrupt, nervous fashion. “Well, it’s a...it’s a good spot. Thick trees, lot of rocks. You can see down to that creek.”

  “Ora Creek. AI says it’s called Ora Creek.” She thumbed towards the east. “Cedar Creek’s at our back and the Station’s directly behind us now, on the other side of that ridge. Say about ten kilometers.”

  “We’re back that close, are we?” he asked through another smoking breath.

  “That close.” Sandy stared into the darkness to the east, wondering if the peak of the mountain containing the Station would be visible by daylight, but remembering not to stare too long. Glancing that direction once, when the Station happened to fire, had left her dazzled for several seconds. It w
as quiet for the moment. She saw a glimmer of green eyes in her mind.

  “What’s, ah...what’s going through yer head?” Sten asked.

  “Nothing,” Sandy lied, but was embarrassed into truth when she glanced at him. “Somebody. It doesn’t matter.”

  Sten looked eastward. “I hope...I mean, do you think they’ve gotten them all out fine?”

  Sandy could only assume the gaunt man was referring to the refugees, the Movement’s dependents. His wife.

  “I don’t know. Guess we’ll have to hold out here as long as possible and make certain they do.”

  Sten put the cigarette to his mouth with a mud-caked, shaking hand and blew out a pensive smoke cloud. “Yeah.”

  A whimper and a sniffle caught Sandy’s ear and she glanced in the direction of the sound.

  “Cally,” Sten answered her unspoken question.

  “Right. I’ll have a look.”

  Sandy made her way to the foxhole allocated to Cally and the repeat blastcannon, partially hidden between boulders. The teenager huddled low behind the heavy weapon with the brim of her Defense Force issue forage cap over her eyes. Another sniffle and a shudder that could only be a suppressed sob gave away what she was trying to conceal.

  “Cally?” Sandy said softly.

  “Oh! I mean...” Another sniffle. “I was told this was my spot, Sarge.”

  “It is. Just checking on everyone.”

  “Oh.” The girl rubbed her nose and wouldn’t look straight at Sandy. A strand of blonde hair dangled free over one eye and Sandy couldn’t help but wonder what she had been doing the day the Invaders came. In school, maybe? At a sporting event? She was a pretty girl. Maybe a cheerleader? Sandy saw Cynthia, saw herself, in Cally’s quivering, watery eyes.

  “It’s all right,” Sandy said, patting the girl on the shoulder.

  “I don’t mean to...you know. It’s just...I know you heard, but Toby’s dead. He seemed so sure. I figured he’d last longer than me. He only raised himself for a second but they got him. Like it was easy. Like it was nothing.” She cupped her mouth with her hand to stifle another sob.

  “It’s the way of things, Cally. Just something you have to accept.”

  The air shuddered in the distance. At first Sandy thought it was more Invader artillery but the Station didn’t fire. She turned and glanced east, saw the horizon rippling with yellowish light and heard a building thunder. The Movement heavy artillery was firing, and not just a single barrage.

  The sky above began to howl, different voices for different ordnance merging and growing as it passed over the partisan positions. The low east sky continued to flicker with the nervous glow as what was obviously a full bombardment built.

  Something popped high overhead. Sandy looked up and watched several more explosions snap amongst the stars. Then the west sizzled as ruby beams flailed the sky; Invader point defenses. Thunder pealed across the valley as the first partisan shells were clawed down. But they kept coming.

  The tracery of energy beams grew more frantic, explosions ripping the air closer to the Invader lines, fireballs and sprays of debris that glowed all the way down to the ground. The freight train sound of artillery filled the heavens and hair stood up across Sandy’s body, animal reflex, though her mind knew none of the fire was coming for her.

  A shell fell through to the Invader lines, its flash silhouetting the ridgeline to the west moments before its crash slammed across the countryside. A monotonous kettledrum pattern of follow up hits rattled through Sandy. Then a long hiss like bacon frying that she recognized as a cluster of anti-personnel bomblets getting through to explode at knee height in a wave of glass-filament shrapnel. More detonations cracked above and Sandy finally realized that they must be chaff and jamming, sprays of sensor reflective foil and ECM pods dangling from tiny parachutes, cluttering the skies and throwing Invader sensors and point defenses into confusion.

  Figures began to appear below, filtering through the lines in twos and threes, bringing wounded with them. A woman guided a hoverskiff uphill and past Sandy by remote, burdened with a half dozen bandaged, splinted partisans. Behind her came a tattered line of stretcher-bearers and more bloodied, moaning shapes in rags. A flurry of movement below betrayed the approach of weary but disciplined lines of guerrillas, bringing weapons, supplies, anything they had salvaged.

  “What’s happening, Sarge?” Cally asked over the din.

  “Get ready, Cally,” Sandy said in a tightening voice as she rose to her feet. “Remember, Runt’s right behind you if you need anything. Get ready.”

  Sandy turned and scrambled back to her hole. There wouldn’t be a lot of time, now.

  THE BOMBARDMENT PETERED out before dawn. The chill air stilled as mist and smoke settled into the hollow between the partisans’ original line of defense and their fallback positions. Sounds acquired a muffled, distant quality, sharpening with an occasional animal cry or the wail of something that had been a sentient being. The faintly sweet, acrid stink of explosives and propellant caught in the back of the throat.

  The partisan officers did not for an instant believe the Korvans had been badly mauled by their artillery, though some hoped. Nor did they believe their foes would simply let them break contact, despite the lull. The patrols went out, down the hills, down into the grass and the mud and the spinebush, down to the creeks. The Korvans would be out there. Somebody had to find out what they were up to.

  Cole, his squad having drawn the patrol for their sector, descended into the hollow, sprinting at first, then crawling through blinding haze. Razor grass, wet with condensation, quickly soaked his clothes. Exposed skin stung where blades dragged tiny cuts across flesh. He kept an eye on the squad mate ahead, following the track he ploughed through the undergrowth. Churned muck grew thick beneath him, taking on a slippery clay consistency that told Cole they were nearing the bottom of the hollow and Ora Creek.

  Sound ahead. Cole froze, saw the guerilla in front of him scamper out of site. He raised his head, tried to see over the grass. Too much damn fog and smoke. Cole figured he couldn’t see thirty yards. He fumbled with the grenade launcher, slung at his side with the barrel down, but made too much noise doing it. He gave up.

  More sound, definitely voices. Cole marshaled some courage and pulled himself forward, hissing as a blade of grass dragged a fresh, searing cut across his cheek. He could see his squad mate hunched close to another figure near the shadowy mass of a spinebush thicket.

  Cole wrinkled his nose, detecting an all too familiar sickly-sweet stench. He glanced around, noticed the scattered lumps of corpses, guerillas slain in earlier fighting or left behind in the withdrawal.

  The voices ahead grew in volume.

  “—god damn ghoul, looting the dead. These were our comrades.”

  “—fuck them and fuck the Movement—”

  “—what squad? What unit are you with—”

  “—kiss my ass, buddy. I ain’t going back to—”

  “—the devil, you’re not, lousy deserter. I’ll drag you—”

  Plasma lightning seared misty air, glaring through the deserter with such intensity Cole could see the outline of ribcage and backbone for an instant before the man pitched into the grass. Cole’s squad mate fell away, hollering, and tried to scramble to cover. A second cyan bolt struck him in the small of the back and spun him to the ground beside Cole. For a second, the dead man’s wide-eyed gaze stared in shock.

  Rifle and blaster fire crackled around Cole, confused but building in volume. Plasma bolts flicked back from the haze, steady, deliberate fire. Every time energy beams shrieked, a scream of pain followed.

  The mist thinned below by Ora Creek. Cole could see its churning waters down almost to its normal trickle but still rapid from flooding. Energy blasts from the opposite side glared off its ripples. Cole saw something splash across. Shapes and motion solidified into faint outlines of Korvans.

  Ice filled Cole’s core. He had to force motion, propping the grenade launcher on his s
quad mate’s body. He wished he could remember the dead fellow’s name for an apology.

  The blunt-muzzled weapon, a barrel-fed, full-auto NGT-4 popular amongst the pre-war Defense Force, felt clumsy in his hands. He aimed it in the direction of the creek, guessed at the arch of the projectiles, gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger.

  The hollow foomp-foomp-foomp of the weapon’s discharge was lost in the rolling crash of the thumb-sized grenades detonating along the bank of the creek. He held the trigger down until the launcher clunked empty, then ducked behind his squad mate’s corpse.

  Korvan fire exploded around him, striking the body and causing it to twitch. Cole fumbled to reload as sparks stung across him. Without looking, he pointed the launcher over his morbid barricade and sprayed wildly.

  Partisan fire was thinning. Cole made out the shapes of guerillas fleeing back to the rise behind them. Incoming mortar fire began to whistle overhead. Well, fuck this...

  Cole threw aside the empty launcher and lurched after his comrades, stripping the straps of gear and reloads, anything that would hinder him as he went. Plasma bolts chewed at his heels. The ground lurched with mortar hits behind him.

  Cole ran without shame, ran like hell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Awareness was charged with Korvan elation. After the prolonged pounding of the worm artillery bombardment, the Special Commandos responded with an enthusiasm bordering on frenzy to the order to counterattack.