The Ashen Path Read online

  The Ashen Path

  Pox War Runners Episode 1

  By

  Joshua Done

  Edited by

  Tanya Andrious & Jana Miller

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

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  About this eBook

  1

  The air-raid sirens began blaring again. It was the third time today, even though no bombs had fallen on our heads. A Tarin’Tal De’kot, the equivalent of an Imperial Command Cruiser in firepower and over three times the size, had been detected entering planetary orbit and everyone knew what it meant. The peace was broken, everyone was on edge, and no one really knew what to do. I had come to the small planet on the far reaches of the Allied Human Worlds to trade. I wasn’t part of the family business, which was building micro synchronizers for data-cores, but I was happy enough to pick up a delivery job when it didn’t cut into my haphazard delivery schedule.

  Now I found myself in the basement of the buyer’s estate, just hoping the modest Poxian merchant’s furnishings above would be enough to shield us once the bombs started to fall. Not that the bombardment would last long. The ‘Tal liked to kill their enemies in person, to count the dead in the cold, orderly fashion that was the foundation of their understanding of the universe.

  “I’m scared mommy,” a little girl’s voice said in the dark. It was the merchant’s daughter, and she wasn’t the only one terrified and wanting their mother. It’s amazing how people became similar and primal when death was looming.

  “Your ship,” the merchant asked, “it has Gravity Stream, right?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But by now that cruiser will have enough gunships in the air to hit anything leaving the colony.” Even though a planetoid as small as Princeton still had millions of miles of airspace to cover, the only real settlement on the planet was the colony that held about five hundred thousand people. Such a small number was a proverbial drop in the bucket when it came to the population of an entire planet, which made it easy to siege from space. The old merchant, almost twice my own age, grunted in agreement.

  “What are the local defenses like?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?” he asked. “It’s like twentieth century Switzerland around here. A gun behind every door and a grenade in every closet, but...” His voice trailed off.

  “But pistols and rock poppers aren’t going to stop orbital bombardment,” I finished for him. He grunted again, and more terrified sounds trickled from his wife and daughter. “So no colonial defense force or orbital batteries?”

  “Not really; we’re simple people Mr. Grumman. We don’t have a bottomless war chest like you Imperials.”

  “Oh, I assure you it’s not bottomless, and it isn’t cheap either,” I countered. “We just don’t like living with the fear of this−” I jabbed my thumb upwards “−Every time our heads touch the pillow.”

  Merchant Fred took a moment to listen to the siren before responding. “I don’t think I can argue with that anymore.”

  I grit my teeth. “I hate saying I told you so.”

  “Well you did. And right now you are the only one I know with a GS starship. I don’t think you’ll stay on this rock any longer than you have to.”

  “Your point?” I asked.

  “Take us with you.”

  I thought about it for the moment, spinning weight, drag, acceleration, and orbital math in my head. “Yeah, I think I can give you a lift, but we’d just be scraping by weight wise. It’d take too long to dump the cargo and I’m hitting space as soon as we reach the hangar, so you can’t really take anything with you.”

  Fred ran to a small box at the far end of his desk and opened a false bottom, pulling out a medium-sized canvas sack. He tossed it to me. “Is this too heavy?” He asked. I tossed it once and caught it, judging the weight as it hit my hand again.

  “Yeah, should be fine.”

  “Good, because a quarter of it is yours if you get us out of this hell hole. I’ve been thinking of moving to the Empire anyway.” I opened the bag and was surprised to see a colorful array of precious gems and metals.

  “Where did you get all this?” I stammered.

  “Here and there,” Fred said dismissively. “Like I’ve said before, I don’t trust people, and you can’t tax what you don’t know about.”

  “Fair enough,” I agreed, handing him the sack back.

  “So what’s the plan, man?” He asked after taking a deep breath and centering himself.

  “Well, first we need to know what’s actually going on, figure out how to get to the Vermillion and launch without being crushed by one of ten thousand beams of energy and missiles, and if all goes well, calculate a clean jump in this forsaken stretch of space.”

  “Right, lead the way.”

  I looked him dead in the eyes. “This will be very dangerous; your family could get hurt or killed.” He stared right back.

  “If we stay on this rock my family will be hurt or killed. I know what the ‘Tal are capable of, I spent time in the AHW Scout Corps.”

  “All right, I agree. Where is the biggest baddest sensor in this city? We need something that can cut through this scatterfield and tell us what’s in the black above.”

  “DalCorp tower,” Danna, Fred’s wife replied.

  “Lead the way,” I offered. Before we left, Fred pulled several of his larger rifles from a cabinet, arming all three of us. Suzie wanted a pistol, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it.

  “If their disks can see the ‘Tal, why can’t they push it to the net?” Suzie asked.

  “Because their disks listen, and don’t shout,” her mother explained simply.

  “But the net uses utility conduits, not just broadcast. Shouldn’t they still work?” Danna seemed to be getting flustered by the situation and danger and didn’t have an answer for her this time.

  “Because the ‘Tal know that and have dirt buster signals to scramble those too.”

  Suzie exhaled a disappointed “Oh,” accompanied by, “That’s not vary sporting is it Mr. Grumman?”

  “Not really,” I agreed. “But whoever said the Tarin’Tal are sporting?”

  “Oh,” the little girl said again, a sour look taking over her face.

  “This way,” Danna said after strapping down her hip holster.

  I had to admit that when Fred said they were armed he wasn’t overstating, that’s for sure.

  2

  Apart from the droning sirens the street was barren and we kept silent ourselves. Even though there were no ‘Tal on the ground and no one else in the open to hear us, something nagged at the base of my spine with the ancient instinct that to be silent is to survive. That impulse, however, clashed harshly with the other side of my nature; to charge into the open, screaming and shooting at anything that moved.

  We didn’t use the Baxter’s vehicle. The ‘Tal were known for using inhibitor fields that messed with almost anything that wasn’t hardened. It wouldn’t completely disable the car, but it would make its steering dangerously uncertain. Besides, we didn’t want to pull even the slightest attention to the orbiting ship with an unnecessary energy signature.

  The building was locked, but it didn’t really pose much of a challenge. I’d been hacking datapicks like the one on the DalCorp building since before I was ten. A shot rang out as we entered the lobby and I threw myself to the floor. “Hey!” I yelled. “What the hell do you think you are doing? We’re human!”

  “L-l-looters?” he stammered.

  “No,” I protested. “We just want to see if you’ve got a signal.”

  “Why?” he asked, a little more calmly.

  “We just need to know what’s g
oing on, nothing more.”

  “Y-you have a ship!” he exclaimed. “You have to take me with you.” I pushed him away from the lobby data station and started cycling through the feeds from the sensors on the building’s roof.

  “None of your business,” I said in my best authoritative ‘don’t question me’ voice. From the way he squared his shoulders and brought his right hand down I knew it hadn’t worked.

  Using the same voice, I said: “Kid, I’ve been on more rocks than years you’ve been alive; I’ve had more punks pull guns on me than you have friends and if your hand moves an inch closer to that .99 you won’t have to worry about the ‘Tal.”

  “Please,” he blubbered. “You have to take me with you. Don’t leave me here to die.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and actually was. “I choose the little girl.” I turned and started walking back towards the door. I had what we came for and I could see his reflection in the building’s windows. If he drew I’d just have to be faster. But instead he just sank to his knees, returning to the despair we’d found him in.

  “That was tragic,” Danna said as we skirted the edge of the building and began making the long walk toward the Spaceport.

  “Yah,” I agreed. “But we really can’t take him. If I took him one of you would have to stay and that’s not going to happen.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, and I knew she meant it.

  “Wait!” Fred said in earnest. “You feel that?” I stood still and felt a growing sensation of pressure on the back of my head and an almost weightlessness that could only come from one source.

  “Everyone down!” I yelled. “On your bellies, hands over your ears and mouth open!” None of them knew why I had told them to do that but they trusted me enough to obey. It saved their hearing. There was a boom that felt like the shock of a ship breaking the sound barrier, only many times amplified, and all of us fell upwards for a fraction of a second. If we’d been standing or kneeling we could have broken our ankles, but the worst we suffered was getting the wind knocked out of us.

  “Barbarians!” Fred gasped. “Gravity Stream activation in atmosphere above a population − it’s an atrocity!” There were a few rumbling crashes as some of the less sturdy buildings collapsed under the strain of the landing ship’s engines.

  “It’s not over!” I yelled. “Stay down.” Sure enough, an earthquake rocked the city. “Tectonic plates don’t like it when someone pulls the hat trick with gravity,” I explained. “The whole area will be unstable for a while but we can’t afford to keep still.” I got up but stayed in the crouched stance of someone expecting the carpet to be yanked out from under them. “Keep moving.”

  The Baxters did so, keeping silent at the same time. There was a real threat now, as several smaller craft broke away from the massive Tarin’Tal troop transport and began lining up with landing locations they had scouted from orbit. The main vehicle would land on the outskirts where its size could be accommodated, or worse, the spaceport. I prayed it was the first choice. If they chose to land at the spaceport it’d be almost impossible to get to the ship, and that was if they didn’t destroy it out of spite first.

  Another quake hit us and sent everyone sprawling. “Anyone hurt?” I asked.

  “Owie!” Suzie exclaimed, getting up and trying to brush her hand off on her skirt. She was only seven, and a look of frustration on her face showed when the blood failed to disappear from her hand, spreading to both her palm and her dress instead.

  “It’s only a scratch dear. You’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t worry kiddo.” I said. I’ve got an autodoc on my ship. You’ll be playing patty-cake by dinner.”

  Suzie sniffed, understanding the seriousness of the situation and trying not to cry. “OK.”

  3

  “There.” I pointed to a plasma smoke trail that bisected our path to the spaceport where it touched down. “At least two heavy pods.”

  “What does that mean for us?” Fred asked.

  “It means that there are at least two hundred Tarin’Tal between us and the spaceport, and maybe another two hundred more already there. Maybe less if they landed further away and only send a few dozen to secure the facility.”

  Under his breath, Fred started speaking in a language I didn’t recognize. Presumably curses for the aliens and the situation. Danna placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “Anger won’t clear a path for us, dear.”

  “Right,” he agreed. “Keep moving?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “We should try to get by before they lock down the roads. Even at two per intersection they can hold the city fairly well till that behemoth of a landing craft can flood it with troops.”

  “They don’t kid around, do they?” Fred spat.

  “No, they don’t.” I held a hand back as a ‘Tal ran past the corner we were standing behind and into the road beyond. It was pure luck that it didn’t see us and tear us to shreds, or boil us in our own skins with its kinetic weapon, or… well, I didn’t want to let myself think of all the nasty ways one could die at the claws of a Tarin’Tal, and I sure wasn’t going to worry Suzie or Danna. Something told me that Fred already knew. “Right; go now!” I whispered in earnest. We made the next alleyway before another of the brutes passed by.

  “That was close,” Fred said, breathing hard. The man wasn’t accustomed to running or any sort of physical exertion apparently. He was a businessman, not a jack-of-all-trades like myself. I couldn’t fault him for it, but it was still putting our lives in danger, not that his wife and daughter were moving any faster.

  “Anything with suppression?” I asked, looking around the next corner at two huge beasts standing dumbly in the intersection, looking at the inactive signals with mundane curiosity. Two things crossed my mind in that instant. The first was that traffic signals hadn’t really changed in six hundred years, the second was just how stupid the ‘Tal looked trying to figure out what the blinking red, yellow, and green lights were for. Of course then there was the thought that always invaded my thoughts when I saw a ‘Tal, and that was how big and terrifying they were, but that was nothing compared to the size of my hatred for their race. My mother had been killed in the first Battle of the Phoenix war when the aliens attacked New Carson, and I had never forgiven them for it.

  “Yeah,” Danna said.

  “What? Oh, right.” I caught the suppression tube and screwed it onto the barrel of the hunting rifle the Baxters had given me. ‘Hunting Rifle’ my left foot! They had matching suppression tubes and high yield mosquito rounds. No one hunts with plasma, it ruins the meat. “Who’s the better shot?” I asked.

  “There’s a reason she’s carrying the sniper rifle and I’m carrying this arm cannon.” Fred said, hefting his growler. If it came down to a standup fight I sure was glad he had that kind of weaponry. The growler could clear a room in no-time-splat.

  “OK, you stay here and target the one with the missing shoulder plate,” I said, pointing out the alien’s shoddy armaments.

  Ducking into the building, which was some sort of hard metal mill from the looks of it, I quickly found a window with a nice view of the intersection. While I hadn’t been in the military myself, I’d spent quite a lot of time at both ends of the barrel and knew my way around setting up a sniper position. That, and I’d been addicted to the how-to shows that were always on the holo before the Saturday gladiatorial contests. It’s amazing how many useful things a kid can pick up from celebrities with ‘survival’ tips.

  I was careful to make sure my barrel never approached the window, which was rule number one according to old man Selzick’s show, and lined up with the bigger of the two aliens from atop some executive’s desk, being careful not to bump his email holo and turn it on by accident. I waited until they quit their shoving match and paused in stupid silence, turning back to the traffic signal. Maybe they were arguing about its purpose. I waited for two heartbeats, and exhaled as I pulled the trigger.

  As all snipers can tell you, the fi
rst thing I felt was recoil; the second was relief as I saw the second alien slump to the ground, its brain pierced by Danna’s round. If her shot had even been a little slow, the smaller beast could have signaled the rest and we’d be cancelled like a bad TV show. They may be brutish and backwards barbarians, but they weren’t dumb; smart even, after their own fashion. There was a reason they’d managed to spread their race over thousands of worlds and conquer or eradicate hundreds of sentient species along the way, and I wasn’t about to underestimate them.

  Suddenly there was a snarl from farther down the road and another ‘Tal appeared in the street. Walking over to its fallen comrades it growled something in its choppy, semi-mumbled language. The beasts were something like a six-legged bear crossed with a Gorilla from hell. Normally standing on four feet and using the foremost two they looked deceptively awkward, because they were fast, ferocious, and enjoyed disemboweling their victims with their jaw line tusks.

  I waited to see if it would sound the alarm. It didn’t, which made me nervous. This one was a hunter. It didn’t want to spook its prey. Fallen Earth, I thought, this is bad. The beast had a full helmet that would stop anything but a direct face shot and shooting it anywhere else would only make it mad. I lined up again, hoping for a clean shot as it scanned the buildings for us. It began sniffing the air and moved toward the corner the Baxters were using for cover. Not on my watch, I thought, and crawled closer to the window above the Baxters. It rounded the corner almost casually, receiving a round from both Danna and Fred to its chest. It backhanded Suzie, tossing her aside and choosing Fred as its main target. It brought a huge clawed hand down on the man. He raised his arm to block it but the beast’s one arm outweighed much of the man’s upper body and he was driven to the ground.

  The ‘Tal reared up, about to plunge down and gore him with its tusks. But unfortunately for the creature it gave me a clean shot at its face, which I took. Reeling back from the impact the beast landed on its haunches with a confused look about it. The round had crushed its bottom jaw and the plasma had burned off most of its hair and skin on its neck, but it wasn’t out of the fight. “Use the Growler!” I yelled. “Finish it!” But Fred was too dazed and his arm was probably broken.