In Her Name: The Last War (59 page)

Once they were finished, the warriors again donned their vacuum suits and left the ship, taking refuge in the nothingness of space high above the human-settled world. Staying together in a group, they awaited the imminent arrival of the second fleet they sensed that the Empress had sent forth to continue the conquest of this world.

* * *

“Not that it’s a big surprise, but we’re not going to make it,” the boat’s pilot said in a matter-of-fact voice as he watched the chronometer that had been running, marking the time remaining until the carriers were to jump. 

The copilot had been frantically trying to establish a laser link with the big ships, but so far hadn’t had any luck. “There they are,” he said as the carriers suddenly flashed onto the extreme edge of the boat’s tactical display. “Okay, I’ve got a laser lock on
Guadalcanal
...”

The icons for the carriers suddenly disappeared from the screen.

“Oh, shit,” the copilot hissed.

“What’s wrong?” Sato asked him, leaning over his shoulder to see the display. As the ranking Terran Navy officer, he now found himself in command again, albeit of a much smaller vessel. After speaking with the legionnaires, he had checked on Colonel Grishin, but he was barely lucid. If they didn’t get him to a sickbay soon, he would die. Colonel Sparks was worse, his pulse weak and erratic. He was bleeding badly internally, and while every soldier had basic first aid skills, none were medics: all of them had been killed during the running battle on the planet.

“The carriers jumped,” the pilot told him bitterly. “We’re stuck here.”

The soldiers and the survivors of
McClaren
were disappointed, but not surprised. The soldiers had known the risks of trying for a rescue, and had taken them anyway. The crew of the
McClaren
was grateful for even a few more minutes beyond the reach of the enemy’s swords and claws.

“Well, that’s that, then,” Mills said with a sigh. 

“Not quite,” Sato told him, looking out the window to starboard, where a deadly dance of fireflies was taking place in the near space between the planet and its moons: lasers and the flares of explosions as the human and Kreelan fleets collided.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Ticonderoga
shuddered as she took another hit from an enemy kinetic weapon, and her hull screamed as an enemy laser raked her flank, vaporizing tons of hardened steel alloy in an instant.

Tiernan and the rest of the flag staff did the only thing they could: they held on tightly, strapped into their combat chairs, and prayed. There was no point in giving orders: all semblance of cohesion in the fleet had vanished as they had slammed headlong into the onrushing Kreelan warships. Half the laser links had been lost in the snarling chaos of the battle, and effective control was impossible.

The ships fought in a swirling pass-through engagement that was more like a massive dogfight from the long-ago Second World War than a fleet space engagement. But there had never been a fleet battle in space nearly as big as this, and the reality of it had thrown half a century of modern naval thinking out the window. Tiernan knew the Navy was going to have to start from square one on tactics and strategy, because this enemy simply didn’t act human, for the most obvious of reasons.

Cruisers and destroyers on both sides hacked away at one another in a knife fight at ranges of hundreds of meters, using weapons that were designed for combat at hundreds or thousands of
kilometers
. Kinetic guns ripple-fired until their magazines were empty, sometimes sending an entire salvo into the hull of an enemy vessel as it flashed by on an opposing course. Lasers slashed across hull plating, vaporizing armor and often penetrating into the target ship’s vitals, sending streams of air and doomed crew members into space. Ships of both sides that were gutted and dying tried to ram the nearest enemy. In a few cases, the ships survived the collision, with the crews fighting each other hand to hand.

“Once our ships pass through the enemy formation,” Tiernan told his flag communications officer, “they’re to jump out to the rendezvous point. We can’t fight like this and hope to win without losing most of the fleet.”

“Admiral!” the fleet tactical officer called out, “
Jean Bart
is losing way - she’s falling behind!”

Tiernan looked down at the vidcom and punched the control to ring up
Amiral
Lefevre. There was a long pause before the system connected, the laser array having to search through the cyclone of wildly maneuvering ships to find the
Jean Bart
.

When Lefevre’s image at last appeared on Tiernan’s console, the Terran admiral suppressed a grimace at his Alliance counterpart’s appearance. Lefevre’s face was covered in blood from a deep gash that ran from above his left eye to his left ear, and there was also a line of blood from the corner of his mouth. His uniform was tattered and scorched. Behind him, the video monitor showed a scene of chaos and smoldering devastation on the
Jean Bart’s
flag bridge.

“
Mon ami,
” Lefevre wheezed, a weak smile on his face, “I fear I will not have the opportunity to beat you at a game of poker. Our ship is nearly finished.”

“Sir, if one of your ships is unable to reach you, I’ll send a destroyer to take you and your crew off-”

“No,
amiral
. You must not risk any more ships.” He paused, gathering his breath as the
Jean Bart
shook from another hit. “I am sure the fleet that is here now is not all the enemy has. They would not send everything to invade another system. They must have reserves. And if our two fleets are destroyed here, our homeworlds will not be able to defend themselves.”

“I’m not sure it would matter, admiral,” Tiernan told him. “The Kreelans don’t seem to care about their losses. Fighting like this, they could take Earth with a fleet half this size.”

“Which is why you must save every ship that you can,” Lefevre emphasized. “The loss of Keran will be a terrible tragedy. But if we lose Earth or any of the other core worlds like La Seyne, we will lose the industrial capacity to defend ourselves-”

In the background of the vidcom,
Jean Bart
shook furiously as she took a full broadside from an enemy warship, the impact sending Lefevre sprawling from his combat chair.

The signal broke off.

Tiernan looked at his tactical officer, but didn’t have to ask the question: the man’s expression told him what he needed to know.
Jean Bart
and all aboard her were gone.

“Contact every Alliance ship you can reach in this mess,” Tiernan ordered his communications officer, “and let them know that we’re jumping out as soon as we’re clear of this furball. I have no idea who may be senior after Lefevre, but if they have any sense at all they’ll get the hell out of here.”

Ticonderoga
shuddered again, and more alarms sounded from the bridge.

* * *

Tesh-Dar stood in the burned-out clearing where so many warriors had been killed by the small human ship when it had crashed. It was an irony of war that the actions of a few of their fellow warriors, in reaching for glory for the Empress in attacking the crew of the vessel, accidentally took many of their sisters’ lives. At this, she grieved, but not as a human would understand it: she did not lament the loss of their company in this life, for even in death were they bound to Her will, and Tesh-Dar could yet sense their spirits. She mourned their loss because they could no longer serve the Empress in the most glorious conflict the Empire had seen in millennia, in what Tesh-Dar had begun to think of as the Last War. The humans had proven themselves to be worthy enemies, and they would be given many cycles to bleed among the stars to see if one among them had blood that would sing. 

Or so Tesh-Dar hoped. The knowledge that her race had only a few human centuries left before it would die out in a single generation was a heavy weight upon her soul. That all her species had accomplished in half a million human years of civilization, and all the more that had been done in the last hundred thousand since the founding of the Empire, would disappear into dust and ash in an uncaring cosmos was a fate she dared not contemplate. Her great fists clenched in anxiety at the thought, her ebony talons piercing the flesh of her palms, drawing blood.

Pushing away her fears for the future, Tesh-Dar turned her attention back to Li’ara-Zhurah. The young warrior had built a traditional funeral pyre for the human female who had commanded the metal
genoth
, just as the other warriors had built similar pyres for their fallen sisters. She gathered the wood from the nearby forest and stacked it precisely as custom demanded, often staggering in pain. She would not let other warriors help her, nor would she let the healers, who had been sent by the Empress from the Homeworld in an act of will, their bodies materializing here out of thin air, treat her injuries. The explosion of the human ship that had killed Li’ara-Zhurah’s human opponent had nearly killed her, as well. A shard of metal, not unlike that which killed the human warrior, had stabbed through Li’ara-Zhurah’s abdomen, and was still lodged there. Tesh-Dar sensed the great pain she was in, but was more concerned about her spiritual distress, the discord of her Bloodsong. It was more than mere disappointment at not being able to claim victory over the human after pursuing her so ardently. It was almost as if Li’ara-Zhurah had lost her
tresh
, one to whom she was bound for life as a young warrior. The death of one’s tresh was one of the most traumatic events in the life of Her Children, a time of great mourning.

Again Tesh-Dar tore herself away from such melancholy thoughts. They were difficult to avoid, for while her race had conquered this part of the galaxy, spreading across the worlds of ten thousand suns, their Way, the spiritual path of their existence, was a difficult one. 

She thought of the Messenger, and the curious twist of fate that had brought him here. Knowing that he was on the tiny human ship that now approached the still-raging battle in space, the warriors of the fleet knew that the craft was not to be molested. Tesh-Dar could not directly assist him in returning home, but the fleet would not interfere in any attempts to join with one of the other human vessels now fighting for their lives.

* * *

Li’ara-Zhurah set the last bundle of wood in place. She fell to her knees for a moment, the loss of blood from her wound taking its toll. She did not understand the depth of her sense of loss over this human animal. The mourning marks, where the skin of her face had turned black under her eyes, flowed as if she had shed tears of ink. It was how her race displayed inner pain, unlike the wetness she had seen streaming down the cheeks of some of the humans. Including this one.

Waving away the warriors who came to assist her, she struggled to her feet, willing her body to obey, controlling the pain with the discipline of many cycles spent training in harsh conditions. 

Steadying herself, she reached out a hand to touch the face of the human woman who had sacrificed herself for the others, the cool flesh so alien to her touch, yet so achingly familiar. Perhaps the creature was an echo of her own soul, she thought. If so, then Li’ara-Zhurah had done well in honoring the Empress.

Reverently, she took a lock of the human’s hair, cutting it cleanly with one of her talons. She carefully placed it in the leatherite pouch at her waist. It was traditionally used to carry trophies earned in combat, almost always a lock of hair. These strands of light colored hair, too, were a trophy, but one to remember and honor this human and those like her. They may not have souls that could sing to the Empress, but their warrior spirit was no less than that of Her Children. 

Stepping back, she took the torch held out by one of the younger warriors. Walking slowly around the pyre, she set the wood alight. Then she moved away to the side, facing the rising flames, close enough that the heat nearly scorched her face.

She did not feel the priestess’s arms fold around her as she collapsed into unconsciousness.

* * *

“You’re out of your fucking mind,
sir!
” the pilot cried, looking at Sato with wide, disbelieving eyes. “I don’t care if you monkeys stick a gun to my head again, but we are not flying into the middle of a goddamn fleet battle.”

“If you want to get home, we have no choice,” Sato told him, too tired to argue anymore. The fact of his own survival had come to feel like a millstone around his neck. “The enemy won’t fire on us.”

“How do you know?” Mills asked, his voice carrying no trace of argument, only curiosity.

“Because...” Sato struggled for words as he looked out the cockpit window, his eyes lost in the glare and flash of hundreds of ships trying to destroy one another. “Because for some reason I’m not to be touched.” He looked at Mills. “They let me go from the
Aurora
, and somehow that made me special to them. I don’t understand how or why. But those warriors on the
McClaren
recognized me somehow. They let us go because of it. And I’m convinced that they know I’m on this boat, and they won’t do anything to harm us. Besides,” he looked at the pilot, who was staring at him as if he were a rabid dog, frothing at the mouth, “we have no choice. Keran is lost, at least for now. If we want to leave, we’ve got to link up with one of the fleet’s ships before they jump out. And that’s going to be soon.” 

The fleet battle was still on the edge of the boat’s sensor array, but Sato could tell that Admiral Tiernan had suffered heavy losses. He would have no choice but to jump out before the fleet was completely gutted. Sato knew that the Kreelans could sustain the loss of the fleet they had sent here, which he suspected had been “dumbed down” to the current level of human technology. Otherwise they probably could have destroyed the human fleet with just one of the gigantic ships that had met the
Aurora
.