In Her Name: The Last War (137 page)

As Valentina rolled to her feet, the big rifle fired again, and two of the warriors heading for the sniper’s position exploded in a fountain of gore. 

“Valentina!” Allison’s scream sent an electric shock through Valentina’s heart as a warrior grabbed the girl by the hair and stabbed down with her sword, the tip aimed at the juncture of the girl’s neck and shoulder.

“No!” Valentina cried as the warrior she had just knocked to the ground sank her claws into Valentina’s leg and dragged her down.

Allison’s scream ended as the Kreelan’s head disappeared in a spray of blood and bone, followed by the now-comforting sound of the sniper rifle’s thunder. The blade of the alien’s sword grazed Allison’s neck as the dead warrior crumpled to the stone dais behind her. 

With a roar of fury, Valentina smashed her foot into the face of the warrior who still had her claws in Valentina’s calf muscle. Then Valentina twisted up on one knee and with both hands drove her sword into the alien’s chest, the glittering blade easily slicing through the black armor, pinning the warrior to the sand.

The fourth warrior who was moving in to attack screamed in agony as the rifle fired again. She only had time to look down and see that one of her legs was gone before she collapsed. 

Valentina was just about to write her off as a threat when she saw the warrior pry one of the throwing stars from her shoulder. Valentina was too far away to kill her first, and the sniper - Mills, she knew - was now focused on killing the last Kreelan still dashing toward his position. He was firing round after round at the warrior, who was dodging his aim with stunning agility.

The Kreelan facing Valentina snarled as she levered herself up on her side to throw, and Valentina readied her sword to try and deflect the hellish weapon.

With a scream of rage, Allison was there, swinging a sword at the alien’s neck. 

Caught totally by surprise, the warrior tried to deflect the blow with the throwing star still clutched in her hand, but she was too late. 

Allison’s aim was poor, but with a Kreelan blade it made no difference if it encountered flesh or bone. The glittering metal flashed through the warrior’s skull, and the top half of her head fell to the ground like a slice of ripened fruit. The body fell back to the bloody sand and twitched.

Allison fell to her knees and vomited just as a shot found the last warrior heading for Mills, blowing the alien apart.

Getting to her feet, ignoring the pain in her calf, Valentina fell to the sand next to Allison and hugged the girl fiercely. 

“Are you all right?” They turned to see Steph, who had rolled onto her side and was trying to drag herself toward them.

Valentina and Allison struggled to their feet and went to her. Lifting Steph up to a sitting position, they hugged each other, overjoyed to be alive.

All three of them looked up at a sound like an ape howling. It was so loud that it stood out from the continued thunder of battle beyond the woods. 

There, on top of a building with a maze of antennas, stood a familiar figure, a big man wearing a camouflage uniform, brandishing a huge rifle over his head and whooping in obvious joy.

“Mills,” Valentina said, shaking her head as she smiled, “you magnificent bastard.”

* * *

The
Orion
shuddered as a deafening boom echoed through the flag bridge, jolting Sato so hard that his teeth cracked together. Blood flooded into his mouth from where he’d bitten his tongue. He spat it out before calling to the flag captain. “Status report!”

“The bridge isn’t responding, sir!”

Sato hit the button on his comm console. “Captain Semyonova!”

Nothing. 

“Get a runner to the bridge to see what’s going on. I’m taking the con. Eldridge, you’ve got navigation. Tactical, assume control of the ship’s weapons. Communications, relay our status to
Thunderer
and Admiral Voroshilov.”

“Aye, sir!” Eldridge had commanded two cruisers before becoming Sato’s flag captain. It had been a long time since he’d been a navigation officer, but he hadn’t forgotten how. Sato had despotically drilled him and the other members of the flag bridge crews in emergency procedures, and now Eldridge was glad for it.

The officers acknowledged their orders even as
Orion
reeled from more heavy blows, and her firing slacked off noticeably. While she and
Thunderer
had destroyed at least a third of the Kreelan ships swarming around them, there were still many left that were either undamaged or still able to fight.
Thunderer
had also suffered two ramming attempts, one of which actually hit her, but didn’t cause serious damage.

“Commodore, we’ve got severe damage to the port side.” The engineering officer was a young woman whose face was colored scarlet by the reflection of the red status indicators from her display. “We’ve lost all but one of the secondary turrets on that side, and four of the point defense lasers.”

As if to punctuate the statement, the ship shuddered again, and another set of alarms sounded.

“Sir,” the communications officer turned to him, her face pale, “the runner reports that the bridge is gone. One of the secondary magazines detonated...”

“Understood.” Sato set aside his grief for Semyonova and the others. There would be time to grieve later, if they all survived. “Order
Thunderer
to pull up along our port side and protect our flank, and have her rotate her weakest side to us.” 

“Aye, aye, sir.” 

On the tactical display, a trio of enemy cruisers veered toward them on a collision course. All three were seriously damaged, streaming air and debris from earlier hits inflicted by their human foes.

“Tactical, concentrate fire on those ships, if you please.” Sato didn’t have to point out which ones he meant. “And alert the Marines that we may have company coming.”

Everyone glanced at him. The Kreelans had stopped flinging warriors through space at human ships soon after the introduction of the anti-personnel mortars that had proven utterly devastating to boarding attacks. The Kreelans spent their lives easily, but even they didn’t have the stomach to waste their warriors that way. 

Instead they used warships that had suffered serious damage to ram their human opponents. The warriors then swarmed through the resulting hull breach. It was more effective for the Kreelans, because it was harder for the humans to mount a defense against them before the warriors boarded. 

But in most cases, boarding wasn’t a concern. The ships were generally moving so fast when they collided that both were totally destroyed.

“Firing, sir.” 

Sato looked at the main viewscreen, which was now trained to port, following the muzzles of the ship’s main guns.
Orion
shuddered again, not so violently, as she began ripple firing a broadside at the approaching enemy ships as
Thunderer
approached from astern.

“Rotate us fifty degrees to port.” Sato watched the approaching battleship, whose forward main guns were also firing at the three approaching cruisers.
Thunderer
matched
Orion’s
rotation, slipping into place next to her sister to cover her badly wounded flank. 

Behind them, the three remaining cruisers and four destroyers of the support flotilla, supported by fire from the battleships’ secondary guns, fended off attempts by Kreelan ships to attack the vulnerable sterns of the battleships. It was a desperate battle of attrition, but on balance the humans were winning. Barely.

Sato allowed himself a grim smile, his lips still smeared with blood from his bitten tongue, as he watched the results of the ship’s gunnery. The cruiser at the center of the approaching trio bloomed into a gigantic fireball as she was struck simultaneously by no fewer than six main gun rounds from
Orion
, the huge shells tearing deep into the enemy ship before exploding. 

A second cruiser exploded, then the third, both the victims of
Thunderer’s
guns. 

“What’s our ammunition level?” Now that
Orion’s
mauled flank was protected by
Thunderer’s
armored bulk and the most immediate threats had been eliminated, Sato could turn his attention to the ship.

“Twenty-two percent for the main guns, sir. If we maintain our current rate of fire, we’re going to be out in another ten minutes.” The tactical officer paused. “We’re at fifty-seven percent for the secondaries, but that includes the guns on the port side that are out of action. I’m having the ammunition from their magazines shifted to the starboard guns, so we should be in good shape for at least another thirty minutes, even maintaining the current rate of fire.”

“And
Thunderer
?”

“She reports thirty-two percent for her forward main guns; the aft guns are out of action. Forty-three percent for her secondaries.”

Sato pursed his lips. He knew they could win this fight, but they’d be extremely vulnerable if additional Kreelan ships showed up. “Restrict main gun fire to cruisers or ships attempting to ram. Engage all smaller targets with the secondaries.”

“Aye, sir.”

On the tactical display, there were still six enemy cruisers and a dozen destroyers left in this group of enemy ships, but nearly all of them were damaged. They had stayed alive thus far by concentrating their efforts on the battleships’ escorts in a running fight astern of the big ships where they were comparatively safe from the battleships’ main guns and pulse cannons.

Zooming out, he saw that
Monarch
and
Conqueror
had mopped up the cruisers that had tried to attack the carriers, and that the ships from Home Fleet were getting the upper hand in the separate battle against the Kreelan ships on the far side of the planet.

Returning the view to the immediate surroundings and the desperate fight going on around them, he turned to Eldridge. For the first time, it looked like a ship he’d been aboard would not only survive, but emerge victorious from battle. Even at the steep price the ship had paid in the losses of Semyonova and the other members of the crew, it would have been a heady feeling were it not for the knowledge that Steph was dead. He couldn’t bring her back, but he could kill as many Kreelans as he could.

“Bring us about as tight as she’ll turn with
Thunderer
alongside. Tactical, stand by with the pulse cannon.” He paused, his dark eyes taking in the positions of the Kreelan ships. “Let’s finish this.”

* * *

“We’ve got to hurry.” Mills puffed as he jogged along the road, carrying Steph in his arms. Allison ran beside him, carrying the same sword she’d used to kill one of the guards. Valentina ran a few yards ahead of them, a Kreelan sword in its scabbard tucked into her combat harness and the sniper rifle across her shoulders. 

After dealing with the Kreelans, Mills had run from the communications center to meet the trio. After lifting both Allison and Valentina off the ground in an unrestrained bear hug, he had quickly applied a combat dressing to Steph’s leg and gave her some painkillers. Then he picked her up and started off for the nearest Marine positions.

Ahead, the pillars of smoke rising from the fields marked the positions of dead ships and armored vehicles, just over the rise outside of town. 

“Bloody hill.” Mills was struggling, every muscle in his body quivering from exertion as he forced his body up the incline. 

Valentina kept an eye all around them, periodically running backward so she could look behind them and make sure they weren’t being followed. There wasn’t a single warrior in view.
Good
, she thought. “Come on. It’s not too much farther.”

“Steph, darlin’, you need to go on a diet.” Mills’s dirty, blood-spattered face crinkled briefly into a grin.

“Fuck you, Mills.” Steph gave him a weak hug, trying not to wince. Even with the painkillers, her leg hurt like the devil. She also didn’t tell him that her wound was bleeding again, the dressing separating from her skin from the rough treatment it was getting.

“Don’t let the commodore hear you propositioning me.”

Beside him, Allison rolled her eyes theatrically.

Valentina spun around again to check behind them, and stopped in her tracks, her eyes widening at what she saw. A cloud of black specks, just above the flat farmland beyond the town, was heading right for them. 

Enemy attack ships.

“Down!” She grabbed Allison and threw her to the ground as Mills, not bothering to ask what Valentina had seen, dropped to his knees beside them, putting Steph down as gently as he could before covering her with his body.

The air was shattered by the screech of dozens of boats, larger ones than had attacked Sparks’s Marines earlier, flying over them. The ships were so low that they kicked up a huge cloud of dust and debris from the fields as they passed.

Wave after wave flew overhead. Mills looked up, and could clearly see the garish markings on the alien craft and make out every detail of their wasp-like hulls. While not as large as the assault boats the Marines typically used, he guessed they were still big enough to hold a couple hundred warriors each. Just the ones he counted after the first waves had passed would have amounted to nearly a division’s worth of warriors. And there were more, a lot more.

As they passed overhead, the ships climbed higher into the sky.

He glanced over at Valentina, who looked back. She shook her head, grimacing.

After the final wave finally passed over and the roar faded, Mills could hear the unmistakable thrum of gatling guns and the sharp crack of tank main guns firing.

“Come on.” Valentina helped him up, then made sure Allison was all right.

Picking up Steph, they walked the rest of the way up the rise to where they could see the battlefield where the Marines had annihilated the warriors earlier.

“Bleeding Christ.” Mills felt his hopes of rescue die as the scene came into view.

The landing zone the Marines had used earlier was a scene right out of hell. Hundreds of Kreelan assault ships flew through what looked like a solid flaming wall of defensive fire. Many of the ships began to stream smoke and crashed, while others simply exploded.