In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  Ignoring the other humans, she walked straight toward him, bearing a staff in one hand that he knew he would have had difficulty lifting off the ground with one arm.

  Mustering his courage, he stepped forward to meet her, gesturing for Yao and the others to get behind him.

  She stopped an arm’s length away, appraising him with silver-flecked feline eyes that pierced his soul, and he felt as if he was staring into the eyes of a hungry tiger.

  In a way, he was not far wrong, for she was the ultimate predator among a race of predators.

  * * *

  Tesh-Dar, high warrior priestess of the Desh-Ka order and blood sister of the Empress, looked upon the alien in silence. She was the Empire’s greatest living warrior, a legend among her fellow warriors, her peers, and had been sent by the Empress to observe these beings. Aside from the Empress Herself, Tesh-Dar was also the most sensitive to the song of the spirit, the Bloodsong, that bound her people together, and to the Empress herself. She had studied the aliens closely in this short time, and while she could sense their minds and their churning emotions, she could hear nothing of the spiritual chorus that might reveal their souls to her questing senses. Without the Bloodsong, they were but animals in Her eyes, beyond Her grace and love. Yet they could still serve the needs of the Empire.

  For the way of their race, the Kreela, was forged in the fires of battle, and Tesh-Dar knew that they had at last found another worthy foe among the stars. The last such enemy had been defeated and its flame extinguished from the galaxy many generations before she was born. It had been a worthy race that had fought well for hundreds of great cycles until, exhausted at last, their civilization had collapsed in defeat. Unwilling to fight on, no longer able to challenge Her Children in battle, the Empress had swept their race from the stars. All that remained to prove they had existed were the accounts of the war collected in the Books of Time, and samples of stone and flora taken from their worlds, which had long since been reduced to molten rock and ash.

  The Bloodsong. It was an ethereal thing, unmeasurable by any instrument or technology, but was as real as the ten thousand suns of the Empire. If the aliens’ blood could be made to sing, they would be spared, for they would be one with Her. But if not...

  Tesh-Dar nodded to one of the warriors and held out her staff. The warrior took it reverently, and another warrior handed her a small urn whose mouth was large enough for an alien hand to reach inside. Turning to the dominant alien, she offered the urn to it. After a moment of deliberation, the creature took it, holding it in unsteady hands. It peered inside to find it empty.

  One of the armorers, a clawless one robed in black as were all her sisters, stepped forward. She held a small disk in each hand: one was black, the other cyan. Tesh-Dar first took the black one in her ebony talons, holding it up to the alien. She gestured with her free hand at the disk, then at the alien, then the weapons, then the sands of the arena beyond. The creature’s face began to turn pale, and she could sense its heart beating faster. It suppressed its fear from the others of its kind, but it could not do so against her heightened senses.

  She dropped the black disk into the urn, and the armorer produced twenty-one more, dropping them in slowly so that the creature could count them.

  Then she handed Tesh-Dar the cyan disk. Tesh-Dar again gestured at the disk, then at the alien, and then she projected an image of the alien ship in the air around them, and pointed to it; the image morphed to show the ship returning to its point of origin, which the priestess now knew was where this species had first been born. As tradition demanded, whichever alien chose the cyan disk would be the Messenger. She dropped the disk into the urn, held in the alien’s unsteady hands.

  Twenty-three disks.

  Twenty-three aliens. Twenty-two would die, and one would live to bring the tidings of war to its people.

  She did not have to know their language or read their thoughts to know that the dominant animal and its companions understood.

  * * *

  “It’s a fucking lottery,” someone choked in the shocked silence that followed the innocent sounding clink made by the last disk, the one McClaren thought of as the ticket home, as it fell into the urn he was holding.

  “Throw the goddamn things back at them!” Gene Kilmer, the brawny rating who’d been with Harkness when the aliens attacked, shouted angrily.

  “No,” one of the enlisted men said quietly, his eyes wild. “I’m not going to die here. I’m not going to die here, do you hear me!” he shrieked, his eyes a mask of undiluted fear as he backed away from the tall alien woman who now speared him with a rapacious gaze. In a blind panic, he tried to bolt toward the entrance they’d come through earlier, oblivious to everyone and everything around him.

  Before the warriors could react, Marisova darted sideways and deftly grabbed the younger man in a full nelson hold, her arms wrapped under his armpits and locked behind his neck, totally immobilizing him.

  Harkness was there an instant later, her hands clamped to either side of his face, her nose a centimeter from his. “Listen to me, Lederman!” she shouted, but he continued to struggle, trying to kick her and drive Marisova off balance. Harkness let go of him with her right hand and slapped him hard enough to snap his head back before turning his dazed face toward hers again, her eyes boring into his. “Listen, damn you!” she hissed. “You are not going to panic, you bastard. You are not!” She shook him, her hands in his crew cut hair now, holding on so hard her knuckles were white. “Do you hear me? Do you?”

  Lederman’s eyes slowly focused on hers and his struggles eased, then stopped. He sagged in Marisova’s grip, and she suddenly found herself not having to restrain him, but to keep him from collapsing to the deck. He suddenly burst into tears. “I don’t want to die, chief,” he said miserably. “Not like this.” He shook his head. “Not like this...”

  “We all die, Lederman,” Harkness told him, her voice softening as she released her death grip on his hair, her hands moving now to his shoulders, giving a gentle squeeze of comfort. “And most times we don’t get to pick how we go. But listen,” she told him, leaning to touch her forehead against his, “if we have to die, I don’t want to give these fuckers the satisfaction of seeing us afraid. They attacked our ship. They murdered our friends and shipmates in cold blood, Lederman. I don’t know about you, but I want some goddamn payback. If they kill me, fine. But I plan on kicking some of their blue-skinned asses before I go down.” She lifted his chin with one hand so their eyes met again. “What do you say?”

  With an obvious effort, she could see that Lederman was getting it together. He was still terrified, but she could see the spark of anger she’d planted growing in his eyes. “You’re right, chief,” he rasped, nodding. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

  “Just use it, Lederman,” she told him as she stepped away. “Get pissed at what these bitches did and use it.”

  He nodded, and Marisova released him. “I’m sorry, captain,” he told McClaren. “I...lost it-”

  “It’s okay, son,” McClaren said, nodding his thanks to Marisova and Harkness. “You just said and did what most of us would like to.” He looked around at the others. “Petty Officer Yao told me a theory, that this is a test of character, and an opportunity to gain the respect of the aliens. Now that we know what’s in store,” he gestured to the urn, “I think he’s right.”

  “Captain,” one of the others asked, “what if we just refuse?”

  Glancing at the tall warrior who stood watching them intently, he said, “We’d be slaughtered where we stand,” he said bluntly, “just like the rest of the crew.” He paused, thinking of what Harkness had said, and suddenly he felt the fear start to slip away from him. Part of the fear of death lay in uncertainty, the fear of when, or where, or how you would die. But that was gone now. He knew that he was going to die here, in a time probably measured in minutes from now, at the hands of one of these alien warriors. In that moment, he accepted death’s inevitability as something more than an
intellectual understanding. He looked over to see Yao looking at him, a knowing look on his face. “No,” McClaren went on firmly. “We’re going to stand and fight. Aside from Yao, most of us don’t have extensive martial arts training, so we’re at a big disadvantage. But our goal here isn’t to win. Our goal is to do what we can to make them pay for what they’ve done.” He could see that his resolution was beginning to take root in the others. Most of them were still clearly afraid, and he didn’t blame them a bit. But they were good men and women. The best. And he could think of worse ways to die. “Are you with me?” he asked them quietly.

  Each of them met his gaze as he looked around the room, nodding their agreement.

  “Okay, then,” he said with a grim smile. “So much for the tough breaks. Now for the lucky sod who gets to go home.” He gave the urn a good shake, mixing the disks it contained. Then he went to the lowest ranking survivor of the crew, a young African woman who had been plucked right out of advanced training to serve on the Aurora. It was to be her first and only deployment. “Subira,” he said softly, calling her by her first name, “you get first shot at the golden ticket.”

  Subira, whose skin was nearly as black as the armor the aliens wore, slowly shook her head. “I’m not leaving, captain,” she told him firmly, her face proud and defiant, not toward him, but their hosts. “Let someone else pick first.”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice as tears began to form in his eyes. He was so proud of her. So proud of them all. One by one, they refused to reach into the urn.

  Finally, Ichiro, the youngest among them, spoke. “Captain,” he said formally, drawing himself to attention. “Sir, none of us are leaving. We are your crew, and we are staying together. Staying with you.”

  “Is that what you all say?” McClaren asked them softly. “As honored as I am to have you here, one of us has the chance to get home and tell them what happened here.”

  “If they want, I’m sure they have the means to send the ship back with the bodies of the crew,” Amundsen said darkly. “That should tell the story close enough, sir.”

  The rest of them nodded agreement. They were staying. All of them.

  McClaren turned back to the tall warrior and stepped up to her, his fear gone now. The die was cast. He pointed at himself, then the others, then at the weapons and the sands of the arena where he could see what must be thousands of aliens now. He held out the urn to her, and she took it. Her expression was unreadable, but if he had to guess, he would have said she was pleasantly surprised.

  * * *

  As she took the urn back from the dominant alien, Tesh-Dar was indeed pleased. These creatures had demonstrated resilience and a will to survive that would challenge Her Children in the war-to-be, and she eagerly awaited the coming combat.

  While the aliens had declined the lottery, a Messenger would still be chosen. A Messenger was always chosen, for that was the way of things since ages long past. She did not know yet which one to choose, but she was content in the certainty that she would when the moment came.

  In the meantime, the aliens began to choose their weapons from among those the armorers had provided. And beyond the wide portal to the arena, the peers continued to gather.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Reduced from the captain of one of humanity’s most advanced starships to a gladiator with only modest skills, Captain McClaren stood in the center of the line formed by Aurora’s survivors in the sands of this strange arena. The stands were packed with alien spectators, thousands of them, who murmured amongst themselves in their own language. As he and a number of the others in the crew had noted earlier, every single one of them appeared to be female: armored warriors or those that wore robes of a bewildering variety of colors, there was not a single male among them that he could see. He realized this would no doubt be important to the xenobiologists back home, but it was purely academic to a man about to die.

  Unlike most of the rest of his crew, he had chosen to forego any of the many weapons they had been offered. He was trained as a boxer and knew how to use his fists as weapons. He wasn’t as young or as strong as he once was, but he felt better than he had in a long time. He couldn’t say that his soul was at peace, exactly, but he was determined to send a clear message to the aliens that, despite their advanced technology and the massacre aboard the Aurora, humans weren’t going to let them have a free ride. He only hoped that the aliens would meet him and the others on roughly equal terms, or the coming bloodbath would be an extremely brief affair.

  He had already said his goodbyes to the others just before they’d been herded out here and formed into a line facing the far side of the arena. He had shaken everyone’s hand and told them that it had been an honor to serve with them, and he meant it down to the bottom of his heart. It had taken all his willpower not to break down and cry, not in fear, but in pride at their courage and resolution. If the aliens wanted a showing of the best humanity had to offer, they would find it here among his crew, his comrades.

  When the alien warriors gestured for them to move out to the arena, Harkness called the crew to attention, and the men and women of the Aurora fell into formation as if they were in a fleet inspection. After a glance at the warriors to make sure they didn’t plan to interfere, she turned her attention back to the crew. She cast a critical eye over them to make sure their formation was nothing less than perfect. Then she did an about face, waiting for her captain to take charge.

  As McClaren stepped to the head of the formation, he came to attention and she rendered a sharp salute. “Ship’s company ready for...” she paused, her face hardening, “...ready for battle, sir.”

  McClaren returned her salute, snapping his arm up, fingers at his brow. “Post, chief,” he ordered her quietly before snapping his arm down to his side.

  Her eyes held his for a long moment before she replied, “Aye, aye, sir!” in her best deck formation voice, her words echoing off the stone walls. Then she pivoted on her heel and took up position at the rear of their little formation.

  With one last look over the men and women of his command, McClaren marched them out in single file onto the waiting sands of the arena.

  * * *

  Ichiro stood to his captain’s right, holding his grandfather’s katana. After the captain had given in to the crew’s desire to stay, everyone had begun choosing weapons. Ichiro had started toward one of the tables when the alien warrior who had taken his grandfather’s sword stopped him. She held it up before him in both hands, arms outstretched, and bowed her head to him as he took it from her, grasping the black lacquered scabbard in shaking hands. She held his gaze, and for just a moment he thought he detected a trace of empathy in her inhuman eyes. She murmured something to him in her language, her long ivory canines flashing behind her dark ruby lips, and then she turned away to join her fellow warriors.

  He had left the scabbard behind in the weapons room, for he knew he would never need it again. The weapon felt good in his hands, the carefully wound leather of the handle easy to grip, despite the sweat pouring from his palms. Because he had never had any training in swordsmanship, he knew that he would only last a matter of seconds against any of the alien warriors, who were clearly trained from childhood in combat. But the katana represented his heritage, and as his grandfather had often told him, the true nature of the warrior rested in his spirit, not in his knowledge of technique or the weapon he held. He would die, but he would die a man, and with honor.

  He hadn’t completely mastered his fear, but as the captain himself had discovered, removing the unknowns had allowed him to control it. He hoped it would be quick, but he also hoped that he would give a good accounting of himself before he died, that he would make his grandfather’s spirit proud.

  * * *

  Standing at the far right of the human line, Amundsen had chosen an alien version of the quarterstaff. He had no experience with any of the other types of weapons, but as a child he and his brother had often engaged in sparring with poles not unlike th
is. He would have been much more comfortable with a rifle, but that wasn’t one of the options they had been given, and he was completely useless at unarmed combat.

  Like the captain, he had noticed the complete lack of males among the gathered spectators. It was indeed an academic question at this point, but those were the types of things he had spent his life exploring. If he lived only a few more minutes, then it was worth spending them analyzing the aliens. To satisfy his own curiosity, if nothing else. He just wished that he would have been able to pass on the information to someone who could have put it to use.

  He guessed there were probably upward of twenty thousand of them packed into the arena to see the coming slaughter. The warriors, so far as he could see, appeared to be a completely homogenous group: all wore gleaming black armor, all wore a black collar around the neck with some number of the gleaming pendants (this adornment appeared to be common to all of the aliens), and all were armed to the teeth with completely customized weapons. The only exception had been the huge alien who had faced off with McClaren in the strange lottery business. She was clearly a warrior, but was not one of the rank and file: aside from her size, she wore that strange adornment on her throat that echoed the rune on her breastplate, carried that huge staff that looked like it probably weighed twenty kilos, and wore a black cloak. Unlike the other warriors, she only carried a single weapon, a short sword, although he suspected that she was more dangerous than a dozen of the others, particularly in light of that walking-through-walls stunt she had pulled earlier. The other crewmen were sure that it had been some sort of illusion using holographic projection. Amundsen hadn’t argued, but he was completely convinced that what they had seen had been real: she had somehow walked right through a stone wall that was probably a full meter thick. How she had done it, he couldn’t even guess. He didn’t believe in magic, but the level of technology this civilization had achieved was so far beyond humanity’s that it may as well have been a form of sorcery.