In Her Name: The Last War (136 page)

Sato looked out the forward view screen at the beautiful, yet terrible sight as
Orion
and
Thunderer
advanced with all guns blazing, seeking to tear out the enemy’s heart.

* * *

Ku’ar-Marekh’s sword whirled and slashed, killing the human warriors who swarmed toward her. She had never been a great swordmistress among the high priestesses. Nonetheless, her skills were far superior to that of the peers. Here, now, her warriors watched in awe as their priestess laid low their enemies in the time-honored tradition.

She had to keep moving or she would have had to reach over a pile of corpses to continue killing. Many of the humans fired their primitive weapons at her, but the projectiles simply melted and fell to the ground. It was a power she could not consciously control. Had she been able, she would have abandoned it, for it might have brought an honorable death sooner. 

The humans were indeed worthy opponents, she admitted to herself. Ferocious and fearless, they grappled with her warriors, and with her. Great would be the funeral pyres for the fallen after this day, for even though the humans were soulless creatures whose blood did not sing, she would see that these were honored in death.

To her left, she saw a sudden blaze of lightning as one of her warriors finally reached one of the huge battle machines that were so prized as a kill among her warriors. She felt the warrior’s dying ecstasy through the Bloodsong as the machine took her life. Then the humans inside it died in their turn, burned alive by the cyan energy that swept through the machine’s metal body.

Emboldened and encouraged, more warriors surged forward, struggling to break through the line of humans who sought to hold them back.

“Forward, my children!” Her bellow carried over the storm of shrieks and curses, the gunfire and explosions that echoed across the smoke-shrouded battlefield.

With a final, massive surge, the warriors broke through the human line. First in a trickle, then in a torrent of swords and claws they broke onto the hallowed ground where the war machines had squatted, useless unless they wished to kill their own kind.

She watched as the things began to back away, their ungainly metal tracks creaking as they sought to escape. They could move faster than her warriors could run, but they would not be able to escape the droves of new warriors who even now were making their final approach to join this battle.

Hurling a
shrekka
and beheading a human who had strayed too close, she stayed where she was, allowing her warriors the honor of the kill as the quickest among them readied their grenades to attack the great machines.

* * *

“Now!” Sparks had his attention focused not on the rapidly approaching wave of howling warriors, but on the Marines they had passed by. 

As one, the Marines dropped to the ground, most of them seeking what shelter might be given by their fallen comrades and dead aliens.

Like the other Wolverines, Sparks’s tank was backing up, moving erratically, hoping to give the impression they were panicking. The vehicles were moving just fast enough that the warriors dashing toward them were gaining on them.

The timing was going to be close.

Dozens of cyan glows appeared along the approaching line of alien warriors as they readied their hellish grenades. 

“Steady...” Sparks’s voice was calm, even though his own gut was clenched in a steel vise. He had seen up close what the Kreelan grenades could do to a tank and its crew, but he wanted to let the enemy get in close, to point-blank range. “Steady...” 

The nearest warriors cocked their arms back, preparing to throw. 

“Now!”

The weapons on every vehicle of the brigade opened up on the Kreelan line in a deafening barrage. The main guns of the tanks spewed flechette rounds that ripped the warriors to pieces dozens at a time, while the gatling guns on the tanks and personnel carriers killed more. Anti-personnel mortars from the tanks popped non-stop, lobbing the small but lethal grenades among the closest attackers, who disappeared in a string of detonations like the climax of a fireworks display. 

Even some of the Marine infantry behind the Kreelan line, bravely or foolishly, rose from cover and began firing into the warriors, adding to the carnage.

It was a bloody massacre.

A small measure of what we owe you
, Sparks thought. He had not a shred of compassion for the enemy. Were it in his power, he would have killed them all. Everywhere. Because he knew in his heart that would be the only way humanity would win this war. By extinction.

Still, he had to concede the enemy’s courage, or stupidity, in refusing to withdraw. Even against the hail of fire that cut them down by the dozens, a few warriors managed to get through. He watched with grim resignation as five of the lightning grenades sailed through the air. Three infantry fighting vehicles and two Wolverines died, consumed by cascades of electrical discharges that left the thick armor plating red hot and cooked the crews.

The firing trailed off, then stopped. It was over. Not because the Kreelans had broken and run, or because they had surrendered, but because there were none left to kill.

“Thank you, God.” Sparks surveyed the carnage before him, his eyes taking in the thousands of bodies, most of them enemy warriors, that littered the battlefield. Some were still whole, while others had been blown to pieces. The stench of flesh, blood, and shredded entrails would have been overpowering were it not for the acrid smoke pouring from the burning tanks and the reek of gun propellant that filled his nose.

One of the destroyed Wolverines cooked off, its ammunition exploding from the heat of the flames that consumed its interior. The heavy turret was blown from the hull to twirl twice in the air like a toy before it slammed into the ground, upside down.

Then another sound came, one he hadn’t heard before.

It was his Marines, the battered and weary survivors of this brief but desperate battle, who had gotten to their feet beyond the sea of dead Kreelans. Holding their weapons above their heads, they gave voice to the joy of their survival, to victory.

Sparks’s heart melted at their spirit, and at how few remained. While he had not lost many of the armored vehicles, the two Marine infantry regiments had been decimated. He guessed from those who were now standing that they’d lost at least half their strength. Nearly six thousand men and women, gone.

It had been a steep price to pay.

“But we won, by God,” Sparks whispered softly. He keyed his comm unit to reach his deputy in the command vehicle. “Get the medevacs in here.”

“Boats are inbound.” His deputy commander’s voice carried an edge that immediately worried Sparks. “But they’re not medevacs, general. The fleet’s under attack, and Admiral Voroshilov is sending the rest of the assault force down to us.” He paused. “
Guadalcanal
is also reporting that more enemy warriors are heading our way. Looks like multiple division strength from the number of landing craft heading toward us from some transports that just arrived in orbit.”

Sparks’s mouth compressed to a thin line under his mustache at the news as he watched infantry fighting vehicles moving toward the line of exhausted Marines to pick them up. 

It would be a race between the remainder of his three divisions and the Kreelans. “Damn.”

A sudden crack from the direction of town made him look up. It was the unmistakable sound of a heavy rifle being fired. More shots rang out in short order. 

The Marine infantry reacted instantly, diving to the ground and turning their weapons toward the sound.

That’s when they all noticed her. A solitary warrior, the one who had led the enemy charge and shielded the warriors like some sort of witch, stood behind the Marine line. Unmoving, still surrounded by a wall of dead Marines, she again seemed to be staring at Sparks.

He felt an unaccustomed tightness in his chest, a momentary prickling of needles around his heart.

Then she vanished.

* * *

Ku’ar-Marekh watched as Her Children died in a blaze of glory under the guns of the humans. The challenge posed by the armored vehicles was irresistible, regardless of the odds. Both the hunt and the devastation among the warriors hearkened back to the tales told in the Books of Time from before the Empire, when warriors hunted the wild genoth, the great dragons of the Homeworld. The ancient tales told of battles with the great beasts every bit as horrific as this, and she watched as thousands of warriors ran to their doom, the Bloodsong echoing the ferocity of their joy. 

And for those few who survived long enough to attack the great metal machines, even Ku’ar-Marekh could sense their intensity of their ecstasy as they hurled their grenades, just before the humans released them from the bonds of this life.

Great was the glory these warriors had brought the Empress this day, Ku’ar-Markekh knew as the battlefield was lost to smoke and flame. She did not even notice the occasional projectile that immolated itself against the shield of her spirit.

At last, it was over. As the smoke gradually cleared, she saw the human warriors stand and voice a great war cry at their victory. 

She looked at the animal she believed to be the leader of the human warriors, sensing the beat of his heart, feeling it in the grip of her mind. It would be so easy, she knew, to take the creature’s life. 

But what glory would be given the Empress from such a trivial feat?

The loud report of a weapon sounded from the direction of the
Kalai-Il
, and she felt the Bloodsong tremble as two of her warriors died. More shots were fired, and more warriors died.

Casting her mind’s eye to the great stone edifice, she saw her human prizes in the central arena and watched as the last warriors guarding them perished.

Guiding her spirit through the nearby woods, then the human settlement, she quickly found the attacker. It was the large human warrior who carried the mark of Tesh-Dar, atop one of the buildings.

Sighing in satisfaction, the gesture more of habit than of any true feeling, Ku’ar-Marekh hoped that together the humans would pose a worthy challenge for her when the time came.

But satisfying her personal indulgence would have to wait a short time longer, for she could sense the approach of both the new warriors and the human reinforcements. All were converging here in what would be a glorious and mighty battle. 

Closing her eyes, she focused her mind on the leading attack ship, then disappeared.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Mills was gasping with exhaustion as he ran through the woods, bearing the heavy sniper rifle. He prayed with every step that Valentina, Steph, and Allison were still alive, and that the warrior with the dead eyes had taken them for her own reasons and temporarily kept them safe. He wanted to believe that he would have known inside if they had been killed, but he had been a solider for far too long, and he knew it was only wishful thinking. Yet his heart told him they still lived, and he had to believe it was so. He had to.

“I’m not going to lose you.” The words were a ragged whisper through his lips, but were the focus of his entire being.

He ignored the continued roar of the battle now well behind him and instead concentrated on finding a clear view of the arenas and the huge stone construct. 

Unable to find a good spot in the woods, he had to run even farther, praying that he didn’t blunder into any enemy warriors along the way as he circled to the edge of town nearest the arenas. 

He needn’t have worried. The town was utterly deserted. He wove his way through the buildings until he was at the central communications exchange, which had a direct line of sight to the town square and the arenas. 

Climbing up the service access ladder in the rear, he low crawled on his belly to the mass of antenna supports at the center of the roof. 

After unslinging the sniper rifle, he set out the spare magazines so they’d be in easy reach. 

Putting the rifle’s scope to his eye and aiming in the direction of the arenas, he slowly, carefully, levered himself up along one of the antenna pedestals until he could just see over the parapet around the building’s flat roof.

“Thank you, Lord.” Relief flooded through him when he saw them all in the center arena, still alive. Steph was on her back, her head on Allison’s knees, and Mills grimaced at Steph’s blood-soaked leg. Valentina knelt next to them.

They were surrounded by a circle of nine warriors, who were standing at what Mills thought of as parade rest, their attention fixed on Valentina. Even with the thundering racket of the battle raging on the far side of the woods, they never flinched or took their eyes from her.

“They’ve got your number, love.” He grinned as he lined up the crosshairs on the chest of his first target, with another warrior right behind her. 

He stroked the trigger, and the big rifle kicked against his shoulder as it fired.

* * *

Valentina happened to be looking right at one of the warriors when the Kreelan’s upper body exploded, her arms and head sailing away from the crimson spray that was all that remained of her torso. From the corner of her eye, she saw the warrior who stood beside the first one crumple to the ground, a fist-sized hole in her abdomen.

A deafening crack followed, and Valentina recognized the sound of a sniper rifle. Part of her wanted to turn and see where the firing was coming from, but she had more important things to attend to. 

The other warriors reacted instantly. Three of them bolted toward the sound of the firing, while the other four closed in around Valentina. Before they moved more than a pace, she darted forward and pried the sword from the amputated arm of the sniper rifle’s first victim.

Another shot rang out, and the warrior who was closest to Valentina died. 

Turning back toward Steph and Allison, Valentina leaped forward, raising her sword in time to block an overhand cut by another warrior aimed at Allison. Valentina let her momentum carry her forward, slamming her body into the alien and knocking her off the stone dais and onto the sands of the arena. The Kreelan’s sword went flying, landing a few paces away.