In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  His opponent calmly stared at him, her form a mirror image of his own, radiating confident strength. Yao had considered going on the attack, and would have if he had perceived an immediate major threat to either of the midshipmen. But Sato appeared to be all right for the moment, and on Yao’s other side, Midshipman Zalenski was sparring confidently with her own opponent, armed with the alien equivalent of a saber. This gave Yao the choice of going on the offense or letting the alien do so. While t’ai chi could certainly be used in the attack, its roots were in defense, and he lost nothing by ceding the initiative to her. In fact, that gave him a certain advantage in his own fighting style, allowing him to use her own energy against her.

  So he stood there, relaxed, staring into the alien’s eyes as the battle was joined around him in a frenzied cacophony of curses and cries of pain, of metal striking metal, striking flesh. One second passed, then two.

  And then she attacked.

  * * *

  Harkness reeled from the agonizing pain in her left thigh and right breast. The simple sticks were not as glamorous, or gory, perhaps, as a sword, and not as swiftly lethal, but she had never felt such agony as she was feeling now: it felt like her flesh had been seared by white-hot metal.

  She had managed to stave off most of the blows the alien had rained down upon her since the match began, at least until the bitch had grown tired of playing around and decided to systematically attack Harkness’s right hand, breaking three of her fingers in a savage strike. Then the alien smashed both of her sticks against Harkness’s right breast, and whirled around to do the same to her left thigh as Harkness reflexively brought both hands up to try and protect her chest from another attack.

  Her left leg collapsed under her, effectively paralyzed from the pain. As Harkness went down, the alien slammed her sticks down in a brutal one-two strike on the chief’s exposed shoulders. Harkness screamed as she fell face-first into the sand, her body quaking from the pain. She tried to roll over and free her left hand, which still clung desperately to one of the sticks, to defend herself, but she couldn’t. It felt as if the muscles in her shoulders had been severed with a knife, and she couldn’t move her arms. The best she could manage was to turn her head enough to spit out the sand from her mouth.

  She suddenly felt the alien slip a foot under her belly and lift, flipping her over onto her back like a turtle. The alien stared down at her impassively as she brought her weapons up to deliver the coup de grâce.

  “Fuck you, you bitch,” Harkness spat, staring the alien in the eye.

  Suddenly a hulking figure swept across Harkness’s vision, and with a surprised grunt the alien warrior was literally carried away. Harkness watched in wonder as Kilmer, his face already a tattered mess, slammed her tormentor into the sands of the arena and straddled her chest. Grabbing her by the neck with one hand, he began to rhythmically pound her in the face with his other bloodied fist. The warrior frantically beat at him with the sticks, hitting him in the head, in the side of the ribs, in the legs, but he seemed impervious to what Harkness knew must have been blinding pain.

  Then the warrior abandoned the sticks and used the weapons she was naturally equipped with. Snarling in fury and pain, one of her fangs snapped off by one of Kilmer’s hammer-blows, she stabbed him in the throat with the talons of her right hand, while using the left to claw at his face.

  He contemptuously swatted away the hand she tried to claw him with and simply ignored the fact that he’d been stabbed. With blood streaming from his torn throat, the alien’s hand still desperately slashing and tearing, his right fist became a jackhammer against the alien’s face, battering her down to the bone.

  After a few more seconds, her hand fell away from his throat, and she stopped struggling. Whether he had strangled her or had fractured her skull, or both, it was clear that she was done. Dead.

  Kilmer turned to Harkness and gave her a smile through his bloody lips. Then he slowly sank down on top of the second warrior he’d killed.

  Harkness managed to crawl over to him, her own injuries seeming like trifles in comparison. “Kilmer,” she rasped, tears flowing freely down her cheeks, “you didn’t have to do that, you damn fool.”

  “Couldn’t stand...to see...my chief scream,” he whispered, the sound more of a wet whistle as it passed through what was left of his throat, “except at me.”

  Harkness cradled his head gently against her chest. Turning to where Kilmer’s original opponent lay still in the sand, Harkness saw that the warrior’s jaw was misshapen, no doubt smashed to splinters by one of his fists, and her face was a patchwork of bloody flesh. He must have fought like a lion to defeat her so quickly so he could help defend Harkness.

  She held him tenderly the few remaining moments until he died. Then, grasping one of the sticks with her good hand, she struggled to her feet. If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to do it whimpering in the sand.

  * * *

  McClaren was holding his own, but that was about as much credit as he could give himself. The alien was simply a better fighter, although not by much. But in a battle to the death, it didn’t necessarily take much. He had seen Kilmer and Harkness go down, but they weren’t the first. About half a dozen others had died already, and the battle had become one of exhausted attrition.

  Most people who had never engaged in a real fight didn’t realize just how much physical stamina it required. While most of his crew, including himself, were in good shape, only a handful had the athletic conditioning for combat that the aliens clearly had. Even those who had close-combat training were simply being worn down.

  McClaren dodged another open-handed strike from his opponent. Her fighting style would have been interesting if he wasn’t in a fight for his life. It was similar to boxing, but instead of using clenched fists, she struck with her hands open, using the heels of her hands instead of her knuckles. It made sense, since it would be difficult for her to clench her hands like he did: her claws would cut right into her palms.

  Regardless, her style was quite effective: the blows she’d landed felt like he’d been hit with a small sledge hammer. He had managed to give her some satisfaction in return, but she was faster than he was, and equally tough. He had snapped her head back a few times and gotten solid hits on her torso, but it felt like he was hitting a leather punching bag packed with sand and solid as a rock.

  She dropped low and made a quick jab for his midsection, and he twisted his torso slightly to deflect part of the blow while lashing out with a right hook. Luck was with him this time, and he made a solid connection with her jaw. She spun away from him, blood spraying from her mouth, but it was only a momentary victory. Stepping back from him, not letting him pursue the advantage, she shook her head vigorously, regaining her bearings as she warded off his jabs.

  Then, baring her fangs in anger, she bored into him with those feline eyes and moved back into the attack, driving him back with a blinding flurry of open-handed strikes.

  * * *

  While Yao was anything but a sociologist, he was able to tell a great deal about the aliens’ culture from the way his opponent fought. As with many human martial arts that emphasized hand and foot strikes in the attack, the alien’s style of fighting clearly was based on the offense, at expressing aggression. Considering the humans’ experience with their hostesses thus far, that came as no surprise.

  But she was clearly surprised, and growing increasingly frustrated, at Yao’s employment of a variety of moves based on the fundamental t’ai chi principle known as pushing hands. Her arts had certainly endowed her with great skill in a variety of attack and defense techniques, but she simply could not get through Yao’s fluid deflection and absorption of her attacks. In a civilization like that of the aliens where combat was the centerpiece of the society’s existence and aggression was the rule, Yao suspected that it would be very unlikely for martial art forms like t’ai chi to evolve, for it was fundamentally based on the ideals of self-defense and compassion toward one’
s enemy. And thus his opponent had no effective counter but frustration. And frustration inevitably leads to mistakes.

  She suddenly lashed out with a high roundhouse kick aimed at his head, and Yao decided he had learned enough. He sank back on his legs, easily avoiding the kick, and suddenly surged forward while her leg was still following through, leaving her lower body dangerously exposed and her balance fixed on only one leg. While t’ai chi had its foundations in quiet strength, certain offensive variations that Yao had been taught long ago were quite lethal: he landed a crippling strike with his right closed fist against her lower abdomen, then followed it up with a brutal attack with his right shoulder, concentrating all of his internal energy into a thrust against her lower ribs. He grimaced inwardly at the crunch several ribs made as they shattered, the splintered ends spearing several of her internal organs as his attack lifted her from the ground and sent her flying backward. Her part in this battle was finished.

  Without further thought of his vanquished foe, Yao quickly moved to help the others.

  * * *

  Sato knew he should have been dead a dozen times over. The alien imp who faced him was toying with him, humiliating him. He hadn’t managed to make a single blow against her: all he had for his efforts was a dozen flesh wounds and at least as many gouges along the razor sharp blade of his grandfather’s katana where it had slammed ineffectively against the alien’s sword. He was shaking with exhaustion and pain, gasping for breath, and wished that the young fiend would finish him off and be done with it.

  He had tried to keep track of Yao Ming and Anna, but if he let his attention wander at all, he was brought back to reality by yet another bloodletting from his tormentor.

  She darted forward again in what he knew must be a feint, but he didn’t know enough to counter it effectively. She jabbed her sword at his left leg, goading him into defending it with his own sword, then she twirled and slashed at his shoulder.

  Ichiro braced himself for the pain, but it never came. As on the Aurora when the aliens first boarded, Yao was suddenly there. In a brief flurry of powerful blows from his hands, the alien girl fell to the sand, unconscious or dead.

  Collapsing to the ground himself, Ichiro gasped, “Thanks, Ming...I don’t think I could’ve lasted-”

  His words were cut off by a scream from only a few feet away. He looked up in horror to see Anna Zalenski clutching an expanding red spot on her stomach where her opponent had stabbed her. Her face growing pale as blood flooded out of the severed abdominal aorta, the major artery that carried blood to her lower body, she slowly sank to her knees.

  Her opponent raised her sword to take off Anna’s head, but never got the chance. Yao snatched up the weapon Ichiro’s tormentor had been using and hurled it like a spear, the blade stabbing clean through the neck of Anna’s killer.

  “Anna!” Ichiro screamed as he ran to her side, catching her in his arms as she collapsed.

  “Ichiro...” was all she said as she reached up to caress his face. He held it tightly, bringing it to his lips to kiss her fingers.

  But she was already dead.

  * * *

  McClaren staggered backward, putting some distance between himself and his opponent. He had evened up the odds slightly with a few lucky blows to her head and what he hoped had been an extremely painful punch to the kidneys (assuming she had kidneys), but he was exhausted. He had gone a full twelve rounds a couple of times in unofficial fights, and knew just how grueling it could be. But that was when he had been a young man in prime shape. Even with whatever the alien healers had done to fix him up, he still wasn’t young anymore. Even their miraculous powers couldn’t turn back time.

  Looking around through his one good eye - his right, since his left had swollen shut after the warrior had gotten through his defenses and clobbered him good - he saw that the battle was almost over. He had no idea how long they’d been fighting; it was probably only a matter of minutes, but it felt like hours. Everyone who had been off to his left, except Harkness, was down, and she was barely able to move, limping badly on her left leg as she slowly made her way toward him. On his right, Yao and Sato were still up and moving, and he noted with an amused grin from his bloodied lips that Amundsen was still alive, too. He wondered how the brilliant pessimist was dealing with that turn of events. But the others, including Midshipman Zalenski and Lieutenant Marisova, were gone.

  They hadn’t gone down without a fight, though. At least half of the aliens were either dead or crippled, and the only ones still actively fighting were his own sparring partner and the alien Amundsen was fending off. The other warriors, after finishing off their victims, had backed away from the action and taken up position in front of the dais where the huge warrior still stood watching. McClaren didn’t think they were going to get out of this alive, but it was nice to see that they were at least playing fair. Sort of.

  He glanced at Yao as he fended off another flurry of punches from his personal alien training assistant, and shook his head slightly. While he hadn’t won every match he’d fought, he’d never been carried out of the ring, and he didn’t intend to start now. He knew Yao could make short work of his opponent, but that wasn’t how McClaren wanted it.

  With one last surge of adrenaline, buoyed up by the fact the others were still alive, he moved in on his lighter opponent. He was done trading blows with her: they were going to finish it now, one way or another.

  The warrior had come to the same conclusion. They crashed together, and McClaren used his weight advantage to push against her, keeping her slightly off balance as he sent a series of right uppercuts into her abdomen. She slammed the heels of her hands into the side of his head, sending him to the verge of unconsciousness before he put everything he had left into a punch to the side of her ribcage that actually lifted her from the sand. With a grunt of agony, the fight suddenly went out of her, and she collapsed to her knees, clutching her left side.

  McClaren staggered for a moment, ready to collapse himself, but he wasn’t going to let the job go undone. He took a shaky step toward her, grabbed her hair with his right hand, and smashed the bloody knuckles of his left fist into her temple as hard as he could. Once. Twice. Three times, until he could tell that he was just holding her up by the hair. He let go, and her body flopped limply to the ground.

  He managed to turn toward where Amundsen was still fighting and took two wavering steps before falling unconscious into Yao’s arms.

  * * *

  No one was more surprised than Amundsen that he was still alive. He could only assume that the aliens had made a mistake in choosing his challenger, because from what little he’d been able to see of the other fights around the arena, the others were fairly evenly matched. He had no other explanation for how he had lasted this long. He had even managed to deal some damage to his opponent, landing a completely accidental hit that broke some of her fingers early on, denying her the use of that hand. He hated to admit it to himself, but he was even holding out some hope that he might actually beat her.

  The alien made another jab at him with her quarterstaff. Only able to use one hand now, her movements were very awkward, and Amundsen easily fended off her attack, sweeping her quarterstaff to the side. He hated to get fancy, but he decided to take a risk and spun around, dropping low as he swung the quarterstaff like a baseball bat, hoping to hit the warrior’s legs.

  To his amazement, he did. She wasn’t able to get her weapon around in time to stop his attack, and his staff was too high to jump over and too low to drop under. Amundsen had put all the power he could into the blow, and it hit her right in mid-thigh, sending her tumbling into the sand with a yelp of pain.

  He lunged after her, raining down a series of frenzied blows on her exposed back and head before she could get back up. He kept hitting her, over and over, his quarterstaff hammering her body.

  Suddenly, Harkness was next to him, her hand on his shoulder. “Lieutenant,” she said shakily, “you can stop now. You won.”

&nbs
p; Amundsen felt like he’d just snapped out of a trance. He blinked at her, then got a look at the quarterstaff he held. The end of it was covered in blood. He looked down at the warrior he’d been fighting. He must have hit her dozens of times. Her head looked like a smashed melon, and her torso was misshapen from the bones he’d broken.

  “Lord of All,” he whispered as he tossed the quarterstaff aside. Falling to his knees, he vomited into the sand.

  Harkness knelt beside him, rubbing his back gently as she might to soothe a child. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s okay, lieutenant.”

  * * *

  The culling is complete, Tesh-Dar thought as she surveyed the carnage of the arena. Of the twenty-three aliens who had begun, only five remained. Of the warriors who had fought them, eight had died, and another seven had been badly wounded. The aliens had displayed great spirit in their fighting, and she knew they would be worthy opponents in the coming war.

  But the end of this first battle had come. Tesh-Dar left the dais and strode toward the remaining humans.

  * * *

  Yao watched as the huge warrior approached the battered human survivors. Amundsen, recovered now, and Sato stood on either side, with Harkness on the ground behind them, the captain’s head propped up on her knees. He had not yet regained consciousness, and Yao feared he never would.

  The alien stopped a few paces away and looked them over for a moment. Then she held out her left hand. In her palm lay the cyan disc. The ticket home.