Duty from Ashes

by Sam Schal

  Preferably in a manner a great deal less painful than it would be at the hands of one of Moreau’s stooges.

  He truly hated not being in control of his own life.

  That thought focused Sorkowski’s attention on the room’s only other occupant. Seated at the small table in the center of the room was a short, graying man with dark eyes and a sharp nose. His representative. What a laugh. The man was nothing more than yet another link in the chain keeping him in line.

  That had been made clear from the very beginning. Judah Petrovsky’s sole purpose in representing him was to insure he pled guilty to the charges against him. No doubt he would put on a good show trying to build a defense for his client but it would all be a sham. Sorkowski knew the truth. The man was yet another of Moreau’s tools to make sure he didn’t try to make a deal with the prosecution.

  “Sit, sit,” Petrovsky said in a raspy voice, clearly annoyed he had been kept waiting.

  “What do you want?” Sorkowski tried to hide his fear behind a veneer of apathy but the way Petrovsky sneered told him he failed.

  “Shut your mouth and listen,” the man ordered softly, his eyes glinting dangerously. “Your trial date has been set. It will begin in three months to give us time to prepare.” Another sneer, one that told Sorkowski there would be no preparation. “You know what you’re to do. Correct?”

  “I do.”

  “And I assume you understand the message our friends sent this morning?” A slight smile, evil and predatory, lit the man’s features.

  “I do.” Now he couldn’t keep the fear from his voice. He had understood the message all too well and was still thanking all that was holy it had been O’Brien and not him.

  “Excellent. We wouldn’t want you doing anything foolish, would we?” As he spoke, Petrovsky slid a sheaf of papers across the table to his client. “Now, return to your cell and remember what you’re supposed to do. Those pages are copies of the charging documents against you as well as the preliminary discovery motions. Do whatever you want with them.”

  Grinding his teeth in frustration, Sorkowski got to his feet and shuffled back to the door he’d entered through a few minutes earlier. It slid open and he moved through it. Despair warred with fury as he did. Why should he be the only one to pay? He wasn’t the one who started it all. No. So why should he be the one to pay the ultimate price?

  Knowing there would be no answer, he sighed heavily and followed the guard back to his cell. God what he wouldn’t do to wake up in his own bed back and realize this had all been a very bad dream.

  * * *

  “Has there been any word?” Kannady asked as he crossed the room.

  Evan Moreau forced herself to smile as he joined her. At last this time he hadn’t been so foolish as to show up at her office unannounced and unexpected. Not that this was much better. She had just finished having drinks with a legitimate business associate when she saw Kannady enter the restaurant. She knew the moment he was certain she had seen him. His expression turned into a mirror of relief and he jerked his head in the direction of the back room. She’d given a minute shake of the head. Anger flared in his eyes but she wasn’t going to call attention to either of them by jumping up just because he wanted it. He could wait until she judged it safe to excuse herself from her companion and join him.

  Then the decision of when to move was taken out of her hands. Her companion thanked her and promised to have the contract changes to her office by close of business the next day. A moment later he was gone and, before she could react, Kannady was striding across the dining room in her direction.

  It was only the knowledge that she was well-known for using this particular restaurant for business meetings that kept in her chair.

  “We have really got to quit meeting like this, darling.” She smiled and reached across the table to cup his cheek with her right hand. To anyone who might be paying attention to them, they would look like close friends or lovers meeting after a long day. At least she hoped so.

  “You said you’d call me.” His tone matched hers, light and teasing, but there was a dangerous glint in his eyes.

  Well, she’d take care of that soon enough. She would not let him continue to put not only her mission but her life in jeopardy simply because he couldn’t wait for an update.

  “Darling, I told you I had meetings all day.” She smiled sweetly and nodded to the waiter who appeared at her elbow, a fresh bottle of wine in hand. He poured, set the bottle on the table and then moved on. “You risk much by coming here,” she said softly once they were alone again. She may have been smiling but there was venom in her whispered words.

  “You said you’d keep me informed,” he countered just as softly.

  She did a quick count to ten. Tempting as it was to deal with him right there, she couldn’t. There were too many witnesses. Unfortunately.

  “Petrovsky made sure he understands he has no choice but to sit back and face the charges against him.” As he spoke, he quickly undressed. “From what Petrovsky said, our friend is so scared right now that there’s no chance he will even think about trying to make a deal. He knows what will happen if he does.”

  “What about the others?”

  “They are being taken care of. O’Brien was treated to a lesson last night to make sure Sorkowski understands exactly where he stands. The others will receive similar warnings. So quit worrying. I told you I would take care of everything. ”

  “And after the trial?”

  “The word has already been passed to certain people, along with the proper payment, that our friends will no longer be of any use to us once their trials have concluded,” she said. “I have no doubt it will look like the typical power play that happens so often when new cons arrive. It won’t wash back on us.”

  “You had better be right.”

  The implied threat hung in the air.

  “I always am.” She let that sink in before continuing. “The plans are already in place. But we have to move carefully. You know that. We can’t deal with any of them until we know they have said nothing to implicate us and until we have in our possession any records they might have kept. You know that.”

  “I do know and I apologize for doubting you.”

  She knew he didn’t mean it. Not that she cared. Soon he would be no more of a concern than Sorkowski and the others.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “MA’AM, WE HAVE PERMISSION to launch,” THE SHUTTLE PILOT reported.

  “Very good.” Ashlyn nodded in satisfaction. “Relay the order. We launch in sequence. Let’s do this by the numbers and bring everyone home safely.”

  “Sounds good to me, Ma’am.”

  “Donnelly.” She turned to where the corporal sat next to Captain Nichols.

  “Ma’am?”

  “This is it.” She moved to squat on the decksole in front of the younger man and pitched her voice so they wouldn’t be overheard. “Ryan, you’re a fine Marine and you’ve done an excellent job helping Captain Nichols put Delta Company’s part of the op together. But we’ve come a long way to kick these bastards out of the system. I need to know that your head is in the game and not worrying about what we are going to find where your brother’s concerned.”

  “I understand, Colonel, and believe me, the captain has already made it very clear that I’m to watch myself,” he replied just as softly.

  “Don’t worry about him, Ma’am,” Nichols said without looking up from the display he’d been studying on his datapad. “He’ll do his duty.”

  For a moment, Ash simply studied the two men. She still wondered if she had made the right decision in allowing Donnelly to come on the mission. Even though she had concerns, she wasn’t willing to risk a bad mark in his jacket just because she didn’t know how he would react. Besides, if the war lasted very long, there would be few of them who didn’t know or weren’t related to someone who had either been killed or captured by the Callusians. That was the way of war.

  She gave them a nod befo
re turning a look on Nichols that warned him his corporal had better not do anything foolish. Then she stood. It was time to get the mission underway and she couldn’t do that as long as the shuttles were still docked in the landing bay.

  “All right, boys and girls, this is it. Lock in, hold on and be ready to hit the ground with your feet moving and your weapons hot.”

  She banged her armored fist against the bulkhead to let the pilot know they were ready. Then she returned to her place near the cockpit and prepared for launch. Doubts were pushed back and she focused on what the next few hours – or days – would hold. The Devil Dogs were the best and if the Callusians were going to be pushed off planet, they would be the ones to do it.

  Oo-rah!

  * * *

  “Hold him, damn you!” the guard growled angrily as the prisoner dug his heels in and once more pulled as hard as he could against the chains holding him.

  Lieutenant Joss Donnelly growled angrily as the guards struggled to control him. When they appeared at the door to the cell he shared with two others from the Tarrant, he hadn’t tried to resist. He had learned very quickly after his capture that disobedience was a sure way to find himself beaten into unconsciousness – but only after they made him watch as they tortured the others. So he had stood by, his gaze locked on a point in the wall well above their heads, as they locked the chains on his wrists. Then, with his arms extended from his sides, they had proceeded to beat him, leaving his ribs screaming in pain and his right eye threatening to swell shut.

  It had surprised him to find himself being dragged into the open. It was the first time he had been the outside the cellblock since waking in the infirmary after the unprovoked attack on the Tarrant. His breath caught and he felt sure they were leading him to his execution. He had been expecting it. For weeks, ever since Fuercon had said it would no longer abide by a truce, the Callusians were not honoring, his captors had been threatening that he would die come morning. Well, it was morning and it seemed they were finally going to carry out their threat.

  Then he saw other prisoners bound between stakes that appeared to have been hastily driven into the ground, almost as if they were a human wall to stand between their captors and – who? He recognized some of the prisoners. There were other survivors from the Tarrant as well as some of those who had served in governmental roles before the invasion. Behind them, clustered together, were others. The elderly and children as well as others who appeared to be more seriously injured than he. He couldn’t tell if they were bound but they did appear to be too frightened to even think about fighting back.

  “Get him in position!” a man yelled from somewhere to his right.

  Donnelly once again dug in his heels, doing everything he could to slow his forward progress until he had a better idea about what was going on. The guards trying to move him into place didn’t have the attitude of invincibility he had come to expect. Daring to look at them even as he tried pulling free of their control, he saw something he had not seen before. There was a desperation to them that went beyond the fact he was fighting back. Then, as the voice once again called out for them to get him secured, he knew something had happened. Something that might actually be for the good of the prisoners, if they could live long enough to find out what it was.

  Something had happened and it had caught the Callusians by surprise. Could it be that Fuercon or its allies were finally making a move to try to retake the planet? If so, he had to do whatever it took to keep not only himself but also his fellow POWs alive. If that meant killing a few of the guards along the way, well he’d shed no tears over it. They deserved whatever happened to them after all they had done since the invasion.

  But to do that, he had to break free of the guards trying to secure him to the posts.

  “NO!” He threw himself forward.

  His momentum pulled the last few links of the chain connected to his right wrist of the guard’s grip. Reacting instantly, instinctively, Joss dove away from the other guard. As he rolled to his feet, he spun the chain with all his might at the guard still foolishly trying to hold him. Metal links smashed the guard’s face with a sickening thud, shattering teeth and bone. With a howl of pain, the guard fell to his knees, hands flying to his face in a useless attempt to stem the flow of blood from his wounds.

  Lt. Joss Donnelly, a navigation specialist who had never thought of himself as a warrior, wrapped the chains around his hands several times to give him better control over them. What a wonderful weapon the chains made. Then he turned, looking for the first guard. Unlike his fallen companion, that guard had shown his true colors and was sprinting away, yelling for help as he did. Deprived of his target, Joss turned again, only to find two other guards quickly dragging his first victim to safety.

  He wouldn’t have much time. He knew it. So he needed to get as many of his fellow prisoners free of their bonds as he could before the guards regrouped and decided to try again.

  * * *

  “Damn it, are all your people incompetent?” Kasun demanded as he watched the prisoner hurrying toward the others. “Peltier, I suggest you deal with the situation right now or it will be both our heads on the block.”

  He didn’t have time for this. It was only a matter of time before the Fuerconese landed troops. It surprised him that they hadn’t already. He’d even begun thinking he might be able to get the prisoners in place to be used as bargaining chips. But no. He should have known it wouldn’t be as easily done as he wanted. Not with those fools who reported to Peltier. Damn it, why hadn’t he fought harder when High Command said it was pulling much of the occupation force from the system? At least then he might have had a chance to hold off the Fuerconese until reinforcements could arrive.

  “Get the prisoners in place now or, by the gods, I will have you staked out down there with them!”

  Damn it, was he the only one who understood just how serious their position happened to be?

  “But –”

  “Do I need to remind you what our superiors do to those who let hard won gains slip through their fingers?” Kason snapped, watching in growing concern as Joss Donnelly worked to free yet another POW.

  Couldn’t High Command have at least left me with a senior military officer who knew his ass from a hole in the ground?

  “I suggest you get more guards down there and get the job done while there’s still time. Then make sure our perimeter defenses are online. I swear if the Fuerconese get through, you will be in the leading element going out to engage them. Now get moving.”

  * * *

  “C’mon,” Joss urged, kneeling beside one of his fellow crewmembers from the Tarrant. “Get up, Bo. You’ve got to get up.”

  “Get back, LT. We’ve got him,” Gunnery Sergeant Leroy Levitson said as he and Sergeant Karin Abramson dropped to their knees on either side of him.

  For a moment Joss looked as if he might argue. Then his eyes locked on the far end of the compound. The heavy gate was slowly opening. That could mean only one thing. The guards were coming back. Time had run out and he had yet to form a plan of any sort that might keep his people and the other prisoners alive a little longer.

  “Drag him back as far as you can and then get back here,” he rasped and climbed to his feet. Bearing down against the pain from his injuries, he made his way as quickly as he could to where the rest of his people waited.

  “Joss, are you all right?” Lieutenant Sharra Sinclair asked in concern.

  “As all right as any of us are,” he said. “Listen up, people. I think we all realize something’s happened and it has the enemy running scared. My guess is they were going to try to use us to hold off an invasionary force. Whether it is the local Resistance or something else, I don’t know. What I do know is we need to hold out until help gets here, no matter what quarter it comes from.”

  “What do you want us to do, LT?” Sergeant Ellen O’Donnell asked matter-of-factly.

  “Those who don’t have training in hand-to-hand, do what you can to
free the others. As for the rest of us, there are no rules now. We’re fighting not only for our own survival but for that of every person here. Don’t hesitate to kill if you have to.” He spoke firmly, hoping they were up to the task.

  “One rule,” Sinclair corrected from his side. “You’re the ranking officer now. So you stay with us and don’t go off trying to win this thing on your own.”

  “Sharra –“

  “No, LT. She’s right,” O’Donnell agreed and then nodded as the gate opened fully and guards began moving slowly in their direction.

  He didn’t say anything. Instead he looked at the guards and wondered how he was supposed to keep them away from the others. For one brief moment, he thought of his younger brother who had opted to join the Marines because he wanted to “take the fight to the enemy”. Ryan would know what to do. He’d probably just smile and rush headlong toward the enemy, figuring the last thing they’d expect was a direct attack, especially from unarmed opponents.

  “Just stay with me.” That was the only warning he gave the others before racing forward. He’d probably die but if it kept the others alive until help came, it was worth it.

  * * *

  Kasun stared out the window, disbelief growing. The guards were acting as if they were the ones who were unarmed. Instead of rushing the prisoners, killing a few if necessary to get the others under control, they moved slowly, hesitantly into the area. Damn the cowards!

  Without taking his eyes from the green, Kasun reached for his com-link. His fingers worked automatically to activate it. But the soft beep indicating an active signal never came. As Donnelly and the prisoners rushed toward the guards, the Occupation Governor looked at the link in concern as he once more tried unsuccessfully to activate it.

  “Peltier, try your ‘link,” he said, fear rising. “Tell your people to move in. They are to do whatever it takes to regain control of the compound.”