In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  Looking at the tactical display, Hanson smiled grimly at their conundrum, temporary though it might be: the Kreelan ships either had to pause and pick up their warriors, which would put them at a severe tactical disadvantage, or pursue the human ships with only a skeleton crew aboard, which also worked in the humans’ favor.

  For once, she knew, the Kreelans had made a major tactical blunder: some ships stopped to recover their warriors, and others didn’t. It was as if they had suddenly become confused or preoccupied with something she could not even guess at.

  Whatever works, she thought as the Kreelan ship that was Constellation’s target exploded. A few seconds later she could hear the debris rattling against her flagship’s hull like metal rain.

  “I’m not sure I believe this,” her flag captain said tensely.

  “We’re clobbering them,” she said, hoping the words would not jinx the battle. The tactical display, however, told the story: between the mines, her ships, and Voroshilov’s fleet, the Kreelans were being pounded. They had already lost twenty ships with as many more damaged, for the price of only three destroyers and two cruisers of what she had come to think of as the Combined Fleet.

  “Captain Braverman reports that he’s engaging enemy ships coming up from Saint Petersburg orbit,” the flag tactical officer told her.

  “Show me,” she ordered, and a secondary display lit up with a depiction of Braverman’s fight. The Kreelans had a slight advantage in tonnage — all of their eleven ships were heavy cruisers, whereas Braverman had only seven pre-war cruisers and ten destroyers — but her money was on Braverman.

  She watched as he split his destroyer escort into a ring forward of the conical formation of his cruisers, pointed right at the center of the enemy formation. The cruisers began to fire their main batteries on a continuous cycle, and at just the right moment the destroyers ripple-fired their torpedoes so they would reach the Kreelan formation at the same time as the first wave of shells from the cruisers. It was a masterful display of precision gunnery.

  It was a massacre. The Kreelan formation’s point defense weapons were saturated with far too many targets at once, the rain of shells allowing more than half of the far more powerful torpedoes to get through to their targets. In less than a minute, all eleven Kreelan ships had either been totally destroyed or were nothing more than flaming hulks that were finished off by the destroyers.

  A cheer went up among her staff as Constellation fired her own salute, finishing off yet another Kreelan ship.

  “Damn,” her flag captain said.

  “I wish every engagement could be like that,” Hanson told him, opening a channel to Braverman. “Captain Braverman,” she said as his image appeared in her vidcom terminal, “that was absolutely superb. My compliments to your captains and crews.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he told her. “I’ll do that. And commodore...” He paused, and Hanson prepared herself for bad news. “Commodore, I’ve sent a cutter to our emergence point where we destroyed several Kreelan ships. I regret to inform you that...” He grimaced before going on, “...that I believe Yura was grappled to one of them, and we destroyed her. I’ll submit myself for court-martial as soon as conditions permit.”

  Hanson sat up in her chair amid the thunder of another salvo fired from Constellation. “What? Captain, Yura was destroyed by a russian nuke when we first arrived,” she told him. “What you fired on was nothing more than a lifeless hulk. In fact, if a Kreelan warship was grappled to her, I would have ordered you to destroy her anyway, to keep her from falling into enemy hands.” She paused to let those words sink in. “There will be no court-martial, captain.”

  “That’s...that’s good to know, ma’am,” he said, an expression of relief washing over his face. “But she wasn’t a completely lifeless hulk: there was at least one survivor. We picked up an emergency transponder beacon, we think from a beach ball, and I sent the ship’s cutter to retrieve whoever it is.”

  Hanson thought of the radiation the ship must have received, what it must have done to the crew. She doubted the cutter would find anyone alive. “Very well, captain,” she said. “Let me know immediately about any survivors. And now that you’ve cleared out the enemy ships from orbit, how would you like to come up here and join our little party in the minefield?”

  “With pleasure, commodore,” he answered with a cold smile.

  * * *

  Pan’ne-Sharakh was in agony by the time she reached her designated place on the great stairway, the fourth step from the throne. She paused for a moment, turning her mind inward to calm her racing heart and burning lungs. Even more than the warriors, the clawless ones such as she were trained in deep meditation techniques, for control of their minds was essential to carrying out the tasks assigned to their caste, and control of the mind extended to control of the body. It would not keep her ancient muscles from being terribly sore come the morning, but the task at hand made such concerns nothing more than trivialities.

  “Pan’ne-Sharakh,” the Empress called to her softly.

  She opened her eyes to see her sovereign standing on the step above her. Kneeling down in reverence, saluting just as did the warriors, she said, “My Empress, to thee I come for Tesh-Dar’s sake.”

  “This I know, my child,” She said. “I have tried to reach out to her, but she does not hear Me.” Her voice lowered. “I fear forcing My will upon her in her present state, for if she raised her hand against Me, I would have no choice but to cast her away her soul.”

  The mere thought sent a tremor of fear through Pan’ne-Sharakh. The Empress loved and commanded both the living and the dead. Those who fell from Her grace and were cast into Darkness lived in eternal agony, lost to Her love and light. Tesh-Dar could not be allowed to suffer such a fate.

  The Empress took Pan’ne-Sharak’s hands. “Together, perhaps,” She said, “we may bring her back to the Way. She is too important to the future of the Empire to risk her falling into Darkness. I cannot see into the future, yet I know to the depths of My soul that she yet has a great role to play in what time our race has left. But we have not much time: powerful as she is, her body, badly wounded, grows weaker by the moment.”

  “Then let us begin, my Empress,” Pan’ne-Sharakh said, firmly clasping her hands, intent on bringing home the daughter of her heart.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  “Okay,” Faraday said nervously, glancing back at Valentina, who still lay comatose in the navigator’s chair, “this is where it might get interesting.” He had flown Mauritania away from the spaceport, staying as low as he dared in hopes of avoiding any Kreelan forces that might be lurking in the area before climbing toward orbit. No one had fired on them, but they had seen the destruction of the ships back at the spaceport through the electronic eyes of the ship’s sensors, and he had no wish to have his ship experience a similar fate. He had gotten intermittent locks on ships in orbit, but the Mauritania did not have military grade tactical sensors, and could tell him nothing about whether they were enemy or friendly. “It’s time to head upstairs.”

  “Take us up, Faraday,” Grishin told him, now sitting in the copilot’s seat. He avoided looking at Valentina: the sight of her gave him what he knew Mills would have called the heebie-jeebies. The Marines were settled in as well as they could be, with the wounded in the passenger cabins and the rest in the otherwise empty main cargo hold. He hadn’t given Mills any choice about taking over the job of assisting Major Justin in getting things organized: having no idea of where they might wind up at the end of this lunatic caper, Grishin wanted his Marines ready to fight again if need be. What was left of the brigade had to be reorganized, weapons and ammunition redistributed, and the available food and water inventoried. The Mauritania could carry them through space, but its food processing capability was far too small to support all of his people. They had to find a refuge, and without any star charts to plot hyperspace jumps — even assuming that Valentina could stand such a strain — there was really only one optio
n: Riga.

  Looking out the flight deck’s massive windscreen, Grishin saw the horizon fall away as Faraday brought the ship’s nose up, climbing toward the clouds.

  After only a few seconds, the ship’s sensors displayed two groups of ships in near space above them, heading directly toward one another.

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” Faraday muttered as he watched the game play out between the two sets of amber icons on the screen.

  Suddenly the ships of one group, the one higher in space, began to change to blue, with ship data displayed next to each one.

  “Hot damn!” Faraday cried. “Those are ours!”

  He and Grishin stared as the two groups closed the range, gasping in surprise as the yellow icons representing the eleven Kreelan ships were wiped out.

  “Holy shit,” Faraday said, looking at the colonel. “We certainly kicked their asses that time.”

  “Indeed,” Grishin said, impressed. “Can you raise them on vidcom?”

  “Should be able to,” Faraday said. “They should still be monitoring the merchant GUARD frequency.” He glanced around the ship’s console, finally finding the communications controls. Putting on the headset, he tapped in the frequency he wanted and began calling. “Any Confederation vessel, this is the merchant vessel Mauritania, please respond.” He paused, waiting.

  He was just about to repeat his call when a clipped voice answered. “Mauritania, this is CNS Southampton. You are in an active combat zone. Clear this area immediately.”

  “Let me talk to them,” Grishin said, and Faraday handed him a headset. “Southampton, this is Colonel Grishin, Confederation Marines. I would like to speak to your commanding officer, please.”

  There was a pause before another voice came on. “This is Captain Braverman, commanding Southampton,” a male voice said. “I take it that you’re aboard the merchant vessel rising toward our formation?”

  “Yes, captain,” Grishin replied. “All of our assault boats were destroyed by the Russians, and then the Kreelans tried to finish the job. We had to...borrow an impounded ship to get into space. Unfortunately, we do not have enough provisions aboard to make a hyperlight jump, and our navigation system is, shall we say,” he looked at Valentina’s limp form, “not fully functional. I would be greatly obliged if you could provide an escort to guide us to Riga.”

  “I appreciate your situation, colonel,” Braverman said grimly, “but I can’t detach any of my ships right now to provide an escort. We’re moving at flank speed to join Commodore Hanson near Saint Petersburg’s moon to see if we can finish off the Kreelan fleet here.”

  “I understand that, captain,” Grishin said, “but I have five hundred and seventy-three men and women aboard. Over one hundred of them are seriously injured. We have no star charts or navigation aids aboard; we are flying blind.” While Riga was in the same system, the ship’s sensors were not designed for survey work: finding a planet in a star system was much easier said than done.

  Aboard Southampton, Braverman paused, scowling. He could not in good conscience leave Grishin and his people to fend for themselves, but the Kreelans — while taking a serious beating at the hands of Hanson and Voroshilov — were far from finished. He simply could not part with even a single destroyer.

  Then the solution struck him. “Colonel,” he said, “we detached a cutter a short while ago on a SAR mission. I’ll order them to rendezvous with you and guide you to Riga. I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do right now.”

  “Thank you, captain,” Grishin said, relieved, “that would be most appreciated.”

  “I’ll give the orders immediately,” Braverman told him. “Continue to climb toward our formation and stay on this vector. Your instruments should pick up the cutter soon.”

  “Understood, and thank you. Grishin, out.” Taking off the headset, Grishin sat back in his seat, thanking God that Braverman had been able to help them. He had not relished the thought of Mauritania wandering about the system looking for Riga. At least fifteen of his Marines were wounded badly enough that they would die in a day, maybe less, if they did not receive proper medical attention. The ship’s autodoc had helped stabilize them, but that was all it could do. And for those with burn injuries, it could do little more than temporarily deaden the pain.

  As Braverman’s ships sailed away at top speed, Faraday and Grishin kept their eyes glued to the navigation console, looking for the promised cutter.

  * * *

  Ichiro Sato looked through the transparent pane of the cramped survival beach ball that imprisoned him, staring at the stars and the world of Saint Petersburg as he slowly tumbled through space, utterly and completely alone. More than once he had reached for the tab that would open the beach ball and vent the air it contained into space. The only thing that stayed his hand was the thought of Steph. Yet even that, as much as he loved her, was only barely enough.

  His emotions, were a confused kaleidoscope of guilt, anguish, and helpless rage. Twice, now, he had been the sole survivor of a ship aboard which he served. The first time, when humans had first encountered the Kreelans, the aliens had slaughtered his fellow crewmen and sent him, alone, back to Earth to bring word of the coming war. This time, fellow humans had killed his ship and his crew, but the “enemy” — the Kreelans — had saved his life, sacrificing themselves, an entire ship and its crew, for him.

  He thought, too, of the warrior who had saved him as he was being swept from the Yura’s shattered bridge and into space, saw her hand against the beach ball, feeling his own pressed up against it as he looked into her eyes. He wept for her as he watched the wreckage containing her body spin away into the darkness, thanking and cursing her in the same breath. He had endured a crushing sense of survivor’s guilt after the Kreelans had sent him back to Earth after killing the rest of the crew of the Aurora, but that had been nothing compared to this. Then, he had only been a midshipman, the youngest member of the crew, on his first interstellar mission. This time, Yura had been his ship, his command. He had been responsible for her and every man and woman aboard, and he felt as if he had failed them all. As much as he wanted to see Steph again, he would have gladly traded his life and the miracle of Kreelan healing for any one of his crew, Bogdanova most of all. Her loss, more than any other single person aboard, tore at his heart. The part of his mind that clung to logic knew that he had done the best he could, had done his duty, and that fate and the enemy — humans and Kreelans alike — had dictated the rest. Yet that was little consolation in light of a destroyed ship and a dead crew.

  As he stared into the void, he caught glimpses of bright flashes, orange and crimson against the black of space near the limb of Saint Petersburg’s moon. No doubt they’re Kreelan warships, he thought gloomily, hammering our own into scrap.

  He let such dark thoughts take him as the fireworks continued, then intensified into a non-stop chain of brilliant, if distant, flashes. There was no way for him to know who might be winning, human (Confederation or Russian) or Kreelan, but he felt a sudden flush of pride. Even if the human fleet was losing, it was obviously fighting back hard. That thought penetrated to the heart of the warrior that lay inside of him. He couldn’t help them, but the least he could do, he realized, was to cheer them on, even if his only audience was himself.

  “Come on,” he growled angrily, clenching his fists as he leaned forward, wishing the beach ball would stop spinning so he could see better. “Fight, damn you!” he shouted as a pair of explosions, larger than the others, lit the dark side of Saint Petersburg’s moon.

  And that was how the crew of Southampton’s cutter found him, yelling at the top of his lungs as if he were watching the game-deciding play of an Army-Navy game, damning the enemy and cheering for his own kind.

  * * *

  Colonel Yuri Rusov, the commander of the bunker’s internal security detachment, stared in unabashed awe and disbelief as the alien warrior systematically killed every one of the troops defending the bunker’s entrance on the
surface. He had never seen anyone or anything move as fast as she had, her sword nothing more than a brilliant disk as it cut down the men outside. Their weapons had no effect on her at all, as if they were nothing more than movie props that gave one the impression of being lethal, but that only produced a loud bang and a satisfying flash.

  When she was finished with the men outside, she approached the blast door at the entrance, and Rusov breathed a sigh of relief. She cannot get through that with her sword, he thought. He watched the security monitor as she looked at the door. Then, with barely a pause, she stepped into it, her body disappearing into the two-meter thick metal.

  “Tvoyu mat’!” one of the men on the security monitoring team choked, his eyes wide with disbelief. “That is impossible!”

  “Get the reserve company to the main entrance!” the colonel snapped. “And sound the intrusion alarm!”

  One of the other controllers flipped open a clear plastic cover over a large red button and slammed down on it with his fist. Throughout the massive underground complex, a klaxon began to bleat it’s warning. Another controller spoke urgently into his headset, ordering the commander of the reserve company of troops to double-time to the entrance.

  “What is going on?”

  Rusov turned to find Marshal Antonov standing at the threshold of the darkened security room, glaring at him.

  “Comrade marshal,” Rusov reported quickly, “I believe an alien has somehow penetrated the facility.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, colonel,” Antonov told him, stepping toward the large bank of security monitors. “That door and the entrance tunnel can hold against a nuclear strike. What did the alien do, walk right through it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rusov answered, holding his ground, “she did.” He gestured for one of his men to play back the video of the alien stepping into the door, her body eerily disappearing into the thick steel, as if she had stepped through a wall of liquid.