Ashes of Freedom

by K. J. Coble

  The other man stepped forward, compact and strong looking but with a softness to the face that suggested he was used to eating much better than the Movement had been these last few months. He gave a smile that seemed much too easy and held out his hand.

  “Michael Klein, Assistant Undersecretary of Defense, Lurinari Free City States.”

  A politician, and an extremely ambitious one to have risked the perils of the journey north. Crozier wasn’t certain he succeeded in hiding his sudden distaste and unease as he shook Klein’s hand. “Mr. Klein, Captain Banbridge, what is it the Movement can do for you?”

  “We’ve heard about you in the City States, Major,” Klein said with that practiced smile. “And they’ve heard about you as far away as LowIsle. The havoc you’ve raised in the Coreal Valley has become folklore and your victories in the Cedar Valley campaign are still being celebrated.”

  Victories. Crozier didn’t quite snort. The Movement had taken roughly sixty percent casualties in the Cedar Valley battles, thousands lost fighting for the Station, hundreds more in the following weeks as rearguards while the Movement retreated and scattered. Certainly a large number had fragmented and disappeared into the mountains. People more optimistic than Crozier still hoped they would turn up. But it had been almost three months.

  Crozier tried not to think about the faces, the names, as he asked, “What is it that you want, Mr. Klein?”

  Klein’s smile changed, becoming hard as he picked up on Crozier’s grim tone. “A direct man. Very well.” He glanced at Banbridge. “The situation in the south is nearly desperate. The Korvan winter offensive has smashed through to To’Hatma, laid siege to the city, and effectively severed the links between the eastern city-states and the western ones. The Korvans are more determined than they have since the early days of the invasion and appear unusually willing to accept casualties. Within weeks, they will have strangled To’Hatma into submission. This will allow them to isolate Ridley and some of our largest factories, as well as permitting them a coastal base to attack across the Clauron Channel to Motley and LowIsle.”

  Klein began to pace. “All is not lost, of course. We know that the Korvans hadn’t expected To’Hatma to hold out so long. We know that their losses far exceed their projections. And we know that the Korvan supply situation is precarious.” Klein stopped and looked at Crozier. “There is an opportunity here.”

  “Mr. Klein,” Crozier said, sensing the politician’s general direction, “the Movement has not recovered from Cedar Valley. I can’t ask them to undertake another major campaign.”

  “And I wouldn’t expect you to,” Klein replied in a nearly sincere tone. “What I am proposing, what we are here for, is a raid.” His eyes took on a gleam. “A raid on Mondanberg.”

  Crozier searched Klein’s face to make certain what he’d heard wasn’t a jest. His mouth curled into a lop-sided smile that someone who knew him would take as annoyance. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m deadly serious, Major.” The gleam in Klein’s eyes became cold.

  “Mondanberg is over seven hundred kilometers from here. We have little hover transport left and we can’t risk it being spotted. You expect me to march troops that distance over poor terrain in the dead of winter?”

  “Captain Banbridge got us here in half that time.”

  And it cost him a third of his command, Crozier did not say. He glanced at the officer, at the tightness around his eyes, and understood the challenging stance a little better.

  Crozier looked back at Klein. “Go on.”

  “You’ll have six weeks to be in position. The force required won’t be large. No more than three companies in addition to the Sothran Rangers.” Klein began to pace again. “The Korvans in the north are keeping the offensive in the south supplied along the rail lines that run though Mondanberg. We will, one, demolish the bridges that cross the Estrek River there. Two, destroy the rail yards and the trains waiting there with supplies. And three, destroy the warehouse compounds adjacent to the rail yards.”

  Klein paused and looked at Crozier. His eyes fell to Crozier’s chest where his hand had drawn out the wedding ring and was rubbing it between thumb and index finger.

  Annoyed, Crozier let his hand fall to his side. “What you propose may be feasible. Barely feasible. But the Korvans will repair those bridges and rail lines in short order. Or they’ll improvise alternate transportation. And they’ll replace the supplies. Whatever disruption you achieve will be short-lived.”

  “A week, or even a few days disruption may prove decisive, Major. The Korvans were stretched thin before this winter offensive. Shortages now will be critical for them.”

  Crozier looked down, noting that his hand had gone back to the ring, fingers working with manic energy. He left them alone as he thought.

  His informants had been telling him for weeks that the Mondanberg garrison had been stripped to a skeleton crew. There were at least three battalions still at Fort Ranzac, thirty kilometers away. A detachment would have to be sent to interdict and delay the inevitable reaction force. Deadly business, that. Still, it could be done. The Movement had salvaged enough high explosives and anti-matter mines to make a real mess out of warehouses and boxcars stuffed with munitions.

  And he wanted to do it, Crozier admitted to himself in a cold rush. After the pounding in the Cedar Valley, it’d been difficult to hold the Movement together and convince them that they’d won even a morale victory. Desertions continued. Even the real hard cases seemed to be faltering.

  The Movement needed to prove it still had teeth. To the Korvans and themselves.

  “I’ll need time to consider it,” Crozier said. “No promises. I’ll want to have a few conversations with my people.”

  “Of course, Major.” The light in Klein’s eyes warmed. His voice held triumph.

  He could read Crozier’s face.

  SANDY LOOKED AT CROZIER in disbelief. He stood in the doorway of the half-collapsed kiln she’d taken over as her quarters. Cold air and snow blew in behind him, flakes dancing about his feet. She shivered, but not from the chill.

  “It’s madness.”

  “I think it could work,” Crozier replied.

  “Then you’re crazy.” She turned away from him and stepped over to her cot. “I knew you were obsessed, Devin, but even so, I’m surprised at you.”

  “I...wouldn’t consider it at all if I didn’t think it could be done.”

  The hesitation in his answer told her she’d hit a nerve. Good. Sandy sat down on her cot, still avoiding his gaze.

  “Sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind. Don’t know why you’re bothering to talk to me.”

  “Because I need you, Sandy.”

  “You mean you need all the hard cases and nut jobs who’ve always followed you before.” She looked up at him, trying to look defiant.

  “I need my best people.”

  “Well...you can do without me, this time.”

  Crozier’s stone features tightened, wrinkles deepening, which was about as close as Sandy figured he would allow himself to come to a wince. She had to look away, felt ashamed, couldn’t face the hurt in those green eyes.

  “Sandy, I know it’s been hard for you since Cynthia’s death—”

  “Don’t even try it!” Sandy leapt to her feet and was nearly in his face. “Bastard! Don’t even try that trick with me, Crozier!” Her blood prickled with sudden hate at his ruthlessness, and fear that he could be so close to the nightmare she could not reveal. No one could ever know. She would not allow it. If only she was dead...God, forgive me, but it would be so much easier!

  Crozier retreated, nearly outside. “Sandy...shit. I didn’t mean—”

  “You’re not the one living with it! You’re not the one who promised our mother you’d watch out for her! And failed!” Sandy had to stop to control the sob lodged in her throat. “I have to see her face every time I close my eyes.”

  Crozier opened his mouth to retort but whatever he had
intended to say remained stillborn in his throat. He nodded and said softly from the doorway, “You’re right. I should have known better than to...” He turned. “I should go.”

  Ah, shit... Sandy put her hand on his arm. The reflex came from a part of her she did not yet fully understand. You bastard...

  Crozier looked at her.

  “Devin, I’m just a pawn.” Her voice was a thin whisper. “What difference does what I do make?”

  He offered her a grim smile. “I ask myself that every day, Sandy.”

  Sandy let her eyes drop to the floor. She squeezed his arm. Her insides felt much colder than the winter air outside. “Promise me, Devin. Promise me you’ll make it worth it, no matter what happens, or who dies. Make this worth it.”

  Crozier touched the hand on his arm with his own and some of the cold left Sandy.

  “I will.”

  She let him go and looked up, nodding. “All right. Count me in.”

  “Thank you, Sandy.” His smile grew a little less grim and his eyes warmed. He patted her hand and left.

  She stepped to the doorway to watch him go. Snow swirled around him as he strode through the partisan camp. He wrapped his arms around himself, looking cold and hunched with the weight of Lurinari’s gravity. And so many other things.

  Guerillas stood as he moved by, some nodding with words she could not hear. He smiled, had something to reply to all of them. They watched him go by, their worn backs going straighter, the light crackling back into their eyes, if only for a moment.

  Fools...they are all fools...

  Sandy knew. She was one of them.

  VORSH DIDN’T KNOW WHY he’d come back.

  He sat under a tarp stretched between two brick walls and warmed himself by a fire. A handful of partisans shared spaces around him, the cold sapping the normal human need to fill silence with chatter.

  Vorsh figured his return to the guerilla fold was motivated by basic needs: food and warmth. Winter in the Coreals thinned even the resilient rahillabuy population and there were predators in the mountains more ferocious and desperate than a lone Shmali. Subsisting on the Movement’s table scraps was better than starvation and freezing.

  And as for warmth...not that he needed the company, but the Movement always seemed to find shelter.

  Someone murmured a warning. Vorsh looked up and saw the reason. Crozier was striding through the camp, looking to be on his way to Sandy’s quarters, about twenty meters from Vorsh’s spot.

  Vorsh unsheathed his dagger and began honing it. Memories returned, tickling beneath his skin. Each stroke of the blade brought a sharpening of the imagery, of the remembered sensations. He closed his eyes and felt his lips drawing back in a smile. Jets of crimson streaked his sight. He could almost taste salty, warm spray on his mouth. He could hear the screams.

  He opened his eyes to see that most of his companions had disappeared and those that remained were working very hard to not notice him. He looked at the hand holding the dagger, saw that it was quivering. He swore to himself and tried to cover up by thrusting the blade forward into the fire to heat the steel.

  Crozier came out of the crumbling structure that Sandy sheltered in. He moved back into the snow haze of the partisan encampment. His course brought him by Vorsh’s spot and he made eye contact. He’d been smiling before. The expression hardened, not with loathing or fear, but certainly not a gesture of friendliness.

  Vorsh responded with a tight grin and a nod that he hoped said, fuck you.

  Sandy appeared in the doorway of her quarters, holding back the tarp flap to watch Crozier.

  Vorsh felt the quiver in his hand begin to spread to the rest of his body. The crimson streaks were visible even when his eyes were open. He withdrew his dagger from the fire and held his free hand close, savoring the heat.

  Sandy had never made any of the attempts her sister had to occasionally look presentable. It had given her a hard, though not necessarily unattractive, aspect. The shorter hair was nonetheless the same color, the eyes identical. No...there, Vorsh admitted, was the real difference. Sandy’s eyes had an edge and a strength Cynthia had never shown.

  Vorsh had seen that strength falter once. A blow of equal shock would be required to break it down again.

  Sandy caught Vorsh’s gaze through the swirling snowflakes and met it for a moment. He wasn’t sure if she shivered before drawing the tarp curtain back across her doorway.

  Judging his dagger cool enough, Vorsh began honing it again. He smiled, remembering the reason he’d come back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The floor of Tan-Ezatz’s office, normally cold marble tile, had been transformed into holographic terrain across which she and Kavelton strode like giants.

  She moved southward, coming to stand at the coast of Freebourne and the weakened but enduring chain of icons that were the Free City States. Her foot nudged the image of To’Hatma and a command from her AI brought the city zooming into close up, a dizzying shift considering the scale of the map.

  “The worm resistance begins to grow alarming, Bakta,” Tan-Ezatz said to her former Chief-of-Staff, present via the Awareness. “I had expected your push last week through the suburbs to net better results.”

  “We’re fighting house to house,” Bakta replied. “But some of our forward elements have slipped around to the coast.”

  “Do you think we’ve inflicted enough damage to their point defense net to attempt a nuclear bombardment?”

  “I’m certain we have not. They have been successful in pulling their batteries back every time we’ve broken through.” He paused and Tan-Ezatz sensed the balling up of his frustration. “I could attempt another infiltration team with a tactical nuke.”

  “That last fiasco killed more of our people than it did worms. I don’t think so, HaustCommandant.”

  “Then we’ll have to settle for grinding them down.” Bakta hesitated. Anger snapped through. “It’s not for lack of trying, HaustMarshal!”

  Tan-Ezatz flinched mentally, Bakta’s anger hurting her in places she could not admit existed. She realized the bite her previous words must have carried and softened her tone. “I know, my friend. Forgive an old fool’s worrying. If anyone can bring us victory, it is you.”

  A hint of a smile from Bakta flickered across the Awareness. “Thank you. I know they’re pressuring you again, Dramen-Singlo and the others. I know how high the cost has risen.”

  “We have stripped everything.” Tan-Ezatz allowed a little of the fear and stress to trickle down to the other, perhaps an improper gesture, but to hell with propriety! “The garrisons are nearly empty. You know I wouldn’t force you if I didn’t feel our situation growing...dangerous.”

  She sensed Bakta sampling her unease. He returned it with the fire that had made him so invaluable to her. “A few more weeks and I will give you To’Hatma and the coast.”

  “Thank you, Bakta. You’re a good soldier and a better friend.”

  Bakta’s pleasure warmed her mind before leaving it. She felt the cold of his absence.

  “Does the HaustCommandant feel he can break To’Hatma?” Kavelton, who hadn’t been privy to the exchange between the higher-ranking Korvans, asked.

  “Soon,” Tan-Ezatz replied, rubbing her temples.

  “Dramen-Singlo and some of the regional commanders await their scheduled audience with you.”

  “Yes, I can feel them.” And she could, a nauseating pressure at the base of her skull that she had not yet surrendered to.

  “They want to review the most recent numbers with you. Dramen-Singlo, in particular seems to think—”

  “I know what he thinks, Kavelton!”

  The younger Korvan shrank from her, physically and mentally. Tan-Ezatz sensed his hurt, but more she sensed his fear. Kavelton was coming to know the possibility of defeat, perhaps for the first time, and was using his confidence in her as a wall to hold the terror at bay.

  Tan-Ezatz remembered her duty as a HaustMarshal. “My apologies,
HaustMajor. It is simply...well, you know how sore I have been with the regional commanders.”

  “I do, my Haust.” Kavelton’s harmonic lost some of its tension.

  Tan-Ezatz looked the young officer over and suddenly wanted to be alone, apart from his youth and the weight of the fear in his eyes. “Kavelton, I would appreciate some refreshment before I conference with Dramen-Singlo and the others. Would you?”

  “Of course, my Haust.” Kavelton slipped from the room with haste, even though her confidence had returned to him some of his calm.

  Tan-Ezatz blew out a relaxing breath and tried to focus. The map shifted below her at a command, pulling back to its former perspective. Only a sliver of land and city stood between her and snapping the back of the worm beast. Once broken, the remaining parts would quickly wither. She was so close.

  Just a few more weeks...

  SNOW FELL IN CURTAINS across the harsh, angular buildings of Fort Ranzac. Lights looked faint and lonely in the white haze. Zarven reflected that the fort had the appearance of an abandoned ruin.

  Half Ranzac’s compliment, those units not assigned to fill the gaps left by casualties in the Cedar Valley campaign, had been sent south. They patrolled hundreds of kilometers of supply line across the plains running from the foot of the Coreals to the southern coast, sentinels against the threat of worm raiding parties. Dramen-Singlo couldn’t be happy about this state of affairs. Zarven managed a grin.

  He paced across the roof of one of the transient compounds to which he and his command had been assigned, hobbling, as the pain of his recently healed wound was still with him. The physicians with their regeneration therapy had performed their usual miracles but Zarven could feel the imperfect mend with each step. Muscles cramped. Bone ached. He wondered if he was getting old.

  “HaustColonel.” Chruvak’s voice worried across the Awareness. “I’m not sure that cold is such a good thing for a recovering Haust.”