“All right,” she said, her heart hammering, “let’s do it.” Leaving the engines idling, she cycled open the clearsteel canopy and disconnected the umbilicals linking her suit and helmet to her ship. She left her helmet on the shelf over the control panel. Eustus followed her out. “Let’s take it slow and easy,” she suggested.
“Good idea,” Eustus said uneasily. His blaster weighed heavily on his hip, but he knew his life expectancy would be measured in tenths of a second if he reached for it. He followed Jodi out of the cockpit, clambering awkwardly down the diminutive crew ladder that had popped out of the hull.
By the time both were firmly on the ground, the warriors around them were on their feet, and there was no mistaking the hostility on their faces. “I’m beginning to have second thoughts,” Eustus murmured.
“Stay here until I call you,” Jodi told him. She was looking at the three warriors in the ring’s center. One, with white hair that Jodi had never seen on a Kreelan before, was cradling Reza’s body, oblivious to everything around her. A shiver ran down Jodi’s spine. I know who you are, she thought to herself.
The other one, with the regulation black hair, stood by like some kind of bodyguard, her hands poised over her weapons, her eyes locked on Jodi and Eustus.
Moving slowly, her arms outstretched, palms open to show she was holding no weapons, Jodi made her way toward where Reza lay in the white-haired warrior’s arms. The bodyguard moved through the surrounding ring of warriors to block her.
“I’ve come for Reza,” Jodi said slowly and clearly. She had no idea if any of them understood Standard, but they should certainly understand his name. “Reza,” she said again, pointing to his lifeless form.
The bodyguard looked confused, suspicious, perhaps, but did not move. Jodi decided to play her ace. It was all you could do when you only had one card left in your hand. Addressing the warrior with the white hair, she called, “Esah-Zhurah.”
The bodyguard’s eyes widened at that. The woman behind her, holding Reza, slowly lifted her head. She fixed Jodi with eyes that were as green as his, and so full of pain that it made Jodi’s heart ache, no matter that this was her sworn enemy, an alien. She said something in a raspy voice to the bodyguard, who saluted with a fist over her right breast and stepped out of Jodi’s path.
Jodi made her way past the warriors, who parted before her, and knelt down next to Reza. “I’ve come to take him home with us,” she said gently, hoping Esah-Zhurah would understand.
“His home,” Esah-Zhurah said slowly in Standard, the alien words coming to her only with difficulty after so many cycles of disuse, “is in my heart.” Her eyes turned to his face, peaceful now, and pale, the thin line of blood from his mouth almost dried. “But you are right,” she whispered after a moment. “It was for your kind that he denied himself before the Empress and parted with all he once loved; it was for your kind that he gave his life. His body, his ashes – even the collar of his honor – I grant you, for he died without Her forgiveness. He died not one with our Way.”
Reaching out with a bared hand, Jodi gently touched Esah-Zhurah’s face. “I’m so very sorry,” she whispered. “I… I know how much he loved you. All these years, he never loved anyone but you.”
“Did you love him?” Esah-Zhurah asked quietly, her magnetic eyes fixed on Jodi’s face.
Jodi flushed with a sudden pang of guilt and embarrassment, but she did not look away. This was not the time for modesty. “I cared for him greatly,” she said. “I… I held him once, at a time when I think he would have died from loneliness, without you. When he slept, he cried out for you. He told me about you, about your love. That’s how I know your name.”
Esah-Zhurah nodded. “Thank you for your kindness,” she whispered. “Will you honor his memory?” she asked.
“Always,” Jodi answered. “He will not be forgotten.”
“Then he is yours,” Esah-Zhurah said, her voice trembling. She carefully laid his body down, smoothing back the hair from the face she so loved. Gently, she kissed him on the mouth. “Fare Thee well, my love,” she whispered in her own language.
Esah-Zhurah stood up and nodded toward Eustus, who walked quickly to where Jodi was kneeling. “You must go quickly,” she told Jodi.
“Jesus,” Eustus said upon seeing the gaping wound in Reza’s chest. He saw the weapon that caused it lying in the grass nearby, its serrated edge festooned with gore. His last delusions about Reza still being alive quickly evaporated, regardless of what Nicole may have said.
“Come on, Eustus,” Jodi said, trying not to look too closely at the wound, “we’ve got to hurry.”
Esah-Zhurah turned away as Jodi and Eustus struggled with Reza’s body. The smell and taste of Reza’s blood were still strong, too strong, and she feared they would always be with her. She watched the blue glow of the First Empress’s pulsating heart, still resting in the mountain crater, and prayed to Her for salvation, for forgiveness. For her own heart was dead, and never would live again.
Eustus was now acutely aware of why Jodi had needed someone’s help. It took both of them to get Reza’s body to the ship. Jodi danced up the ladder to the aft cockpit, standing on the edge of the hull to help Eustus as he climbed up behind her, Reza over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. After a few minutes of precarious balancing and brute force, Eustus was secured in the aft seat, holding Reza’s body.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said as Jodi dropped down into the pilot’s seat and began the takeoff sequence, slapping on her helmet as the canopy whined into place.
Thirty seconds later, they were airborne.
***
“We’re reading a ship ascending from the surface, sir,” the intel officer reported. “Checks out as a Corsair.”
“Mackenzie,” Sinclaire growled.
“Looks like it, sir.”
Sinclaire only grunted in response. On the tactical display, a tiny blue wedge detached itself from the planet and set course for the fleet, now hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. And everywhere, crowding the display, were red wedges accompanied by a few lines of elaborating data that identified the Kreelan ships that were appearing around Erlang like salmon about to spawn. “How many Kreelan ships, now?”
“Eighty-seven major combatants, sir, plus scores of smaller ships,” the intel officer reported. “STARNET is reporting as many more still on the way.”
“Bloody hell,” Sinclaire whispered. It was the largest Kreelan battle fleet that had ever been assembled in Sinclaire’s lifetime, and more ships were still arriving; humanity would never have been able to amass such a fleet in one location so quickly. “How long to the jump point?”
“Nine minutes and forty-seven seconds, sir,” Captain Amadi replied.
“And how long for Mackenzie’s ship to reach us?”
Intel shook her head. “Almost eleven minutes, admiral, at the Corsair’s top speed.”
A little over a minute too late, he thought glumly. “Has anyone been able to contact her yet?”
“No sir,” Amadi said. “Nothing since she left the ship.” They had no way of knowing that Jodi had disabled the command datalink in her fighter that might have allowed Sinclaire to recall it on autopilot, overriding Jodi’s own commands. And along with the datalink went the voice and video communications.
“She’s on her own, then,” Sinclaire said. “I won’t risk the fleet for a single person.”
“Sir,” a yeoman called from the FLEETCOM position, “it’s Commander Ivanova. She’s in trouble.”
***
Commander Ludmilla lvanova, captain of C.S.S. Gremlin, a destroyer guarding the fleet’s rear as it withdrew, was more than in trouble.
“Admiral, we’re taking heavy fire from a cruiser that just dropped in-system,” she said quickly as her ship rocked under the impact of another salvo.
“Captain!” the engineering officer reported, “We’ve lost the starboard aft-quarter shields!”
“Helm, roll us nine-zero
degrees to starboard!” she ordered quickly. The destroyer responded immediately, rolling its exposed side away from the withering fire from the heavier Kreelan ship. “Make your course zero-five-zero mark eight-zero. All ahead flank!” While Gremlin was outgunned and out-armored, she was still faster and more maneuverable, and had her own set of fighting teeth.
Focusing again on Sinclaire’s concerned image, she said, “We’ll try to draw them off, sir.” She smiled. “Wish us luck, admiral.”
“Good luck, Ludmilla,” he said. It was a paltry farewell to the captain and crew of a good ship. Both of them knew that Gremlin would not be returning to port. The Kreelan cruiser had the uncanny luck to have dropped in right behind the retreating human fleet, where none of the heavy ships could bring their main batteries to bear, and where they themselves were most vulnerable to enemy fire. It was Gremlin’s job to hold off any Kreelan ships long enough for the fleet to jump out; if she could not, and Sinclaire was forced to turn any of his other ships to face the oncoming threat, he stood to lose a lot more than a single destroyer. “Godspeed, captain.”
On Ivanova’s display, his image faded, disappeared.
An explosion rocked the ship, throwing her forward against the combat restraints of her command chair. “Damage report!” she shouted into the chaos that was the bridge.
“Hull breach in engineering!” someone replied. “Main drives off-line!”
“Weapons,” she ordered the crew manning the weapons stations, “ready torpedoes, full spread, home-on-target mode.”
“Torpedoes ready, captain!”
In the main viewer, she could see the Kreelan cruiser gaining rapidly. Her skin tingled as she could almost sense the enemy ship’s main batteries charging, almost ready to gut her wounded destroyer…
“Shoot!”
Just as the Kreelan cruiser’s guns erupted with lethal energy, Gremlin’s eight torpedo launch tubes jettisoned their own destructive cargo. Seven of them cleared the ship before the final Kreelan salvo tore into the thinly armored destroyer, boring into its reactor core. The Gremlin disappeared in a huge fireball that consumed Ivanova and her crew.
The eighth torpedo, not quite free of its tube, suffered minor, but significant, damage to its guidance system before it cleared the blast and debris that was all that remained of the Gremlin. As its siblings began their dance of death with the Kreelan cruiser, the eighth torpedo wandered off on its own. Its electronic brain damaged, no longer able to distinguish friend from foe, it circled through space, looking for a target.
Any target.
***
“Somebody just bought it,” Jodi said as she watched the fireball fade to the residual glow that was all that was left of whatever ship it had been. Not far from it, she saw several smaller explosions silhouette a larger ship that passed through the first fireball, only to explode in its own turn. Torpedoes, she thought to herself. Somebody nailed that Kreelan fucker.
“How much farther?” Eustus asked. He had loved Reza as a friend and commander, but was losing patience with him as a corpse. His uniform was soaked with Reza’s blood, and Reza’s crushing weight in the already cramped cockpit was giving him a case of claustrophobia. The smell was none too pleasant, either.
Jodi checked her instruments. It was going to be a lot closer than she cared to admit. And the margin was not in their favor. “About six minutes,” she said. She was not about to worry him with details, like they were going to be almost a minute short of the fleet’s projected jump-out time. Unconsciously, her left hand pressed forward on the throttles, which were already pegged against their stops. The Corsair was giving her all it had.
All around them, the weapons of the dozens of Kreelan warships in the area were trained on them, but none had fired.
A warning buzzer suddenly went off in Jodi’s ear. “Oh, shit,” she hissed, craning her head, scanning the space around her.
“What is it?” Eustus asked, looking around frantically, although he did not even know what he was looking for.
“A torpedo’s got a lock on us,” Jodi said urgently. “There it is!” Highlighted on the holo display as the ship’s targeting computer calculated the weapon’s trajectory, the torpedo was coming at them from almost directly ahead. “Son of a bitch! It’s one of ours! Hang on!”
She pulled up in a wrenching, twisting corkscrew, hoping to throw the torpedo off, to make it break its lock on her ship. She watched in the display as it passed beneath them, swung around, and began tracking them from astern.
Goddammit, she thought angrily. She could clearly see the human ships now, Gneisenau’s enormous drives shining like a friendly star. But they were too far, much too far away.
“Jodi!” Eustus cried. He was propped up in his seat, looking aft at the torpedo. Forgetting for a moment that he was looking at his own death, he was mesmerized by the sight of the thing, the weapon’s speed sufficient to induce fusion of the hydrogen in space on a molecular level, generating a bow wave of ghostly reddish radiation.
He did not see Reza’s eyes flicker open.
Jodi did everything she knew to shake the weapon, but to no avail. She knew that their time was up.
“I’m sorry, Eustus,” she said as the cockpit filled with the blood-red fusion glow from the approaching torpedo. “I’m so sorry.”
Neither she nor Eustus noticed as metal claws took hold of them, just as the torpedo exploded above the cockpit.
***
Sinclaire turned away, sickened at the lives he had just seen wasted. And he probably would never know why Mackenzie had done what she did, or even what she was trying to accomplish. But it did not matter now. “That’s it, then,” he said angrily.
“The fleet reports ready for jump, admiral,” Captain Amadi said quietly. Commander Mackenzie had not been with him for very long, but he had enjoyed her company greatly. Her loss, and the effective combat retirement of Captain Carré, was indeed tragic.
Sinclaire nodded. “Let’s be off, then. If you need anything or there’s any news, I’ll be in my cabin.” Two of his finest officers, a good destroyer and her crew, a full Marine regiment, and over a million civilians on Erlang, all written off. He wished he was planetside already, where he could find a nice dark pub and get thoroughly, utterly drunk. He kept his hands close to his sides, hoping that no one would notice that they were shaking.
“Aye, aye, sir.” Amadi turned and began issuing the instructions that would take the fleet home.
***
In the landing bay, the Marines had been watching the holo display, howling their support of Jodi’s run through the Kreelan lines as if they were at a Marine-Navy soccer game, evening up the score. But the bay was filled with shocked silence as the display showed the icon representing Jodi’s fighter wink yellow and then disappear after her desperate attempts to get away from the brain-damaged torpedo. She and Eustus were gone.
A moment later, the display cleared entirely as the fleet jumped into hyperspace.
The Marines who now belonged to brevet Captain Hawthorne turned away, sadness and exhaustion etched on their features.
Enya found a corner to herself where she slumped down and rested her head in her hands, too tired even to cry. Her world was gone, her people gone, and now Eustus was gone, too. She had nothing left.
“Hey,” she heard someone say, “do you feel that?”
“Feel what?” someone snapped angrily. “Your hand on my butt?”
And then she felt it, too. The air had suddenly grown heavy and still, as if they had dived under water. Her ears popped. As she looked up she was blinded by a searing blue-white flash.
“Explosion in starboard bay!” someone shouted in the maelstrom of lights that clouded her vision. She heard an alarm braying and running feet guided only by flash-blinded eyes. But there had been no sound, just the flash, and then the heavy feeling in the air disappeared as mysteriously as it had come.
As the others crowded their way out of the bay, fearful of a hull breach, Enya sta
yed in her corner, her eyes shut, waiting for her vision to clear. She did not know the bay like the Marines did, and could just as easily find herself running out the shielded landing door.
After a moment that seemed like forever, she opened her eyes. And there, in a heap of tangled arms and legs on the floor, looking wide-eyed at their surroundings as if they had never seen this place before, were Eustus and Jodi, with Reza’s torn body between them.
“Eustus!” she cried as she leaped to her feet and ran toward them, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. The remaining Marines, shocked by what they saw, slowly gathered around the new arrivals, looking at them as if they were ghosts, the result of a mass hallucination.
“Lord of All,” someone whispered.
“Get Captain Gard to sickbay, now,” Jodi managed, still in shock. She was conscious only of two totally unrelated things: that Reza was somehow still alive, and that she had peed herself. The change of laundry, she decided, could wait; Reza came first. She struggled to her knees as helping hands pried Reza’s talons from her numb shoulder and Eustus’s thigh before they carried the stricken captain at a run to the sickbay. She did not try to dissuade the hands that picked her up, carrying her after him. Eustus, helped by Enya and a babbling Washington Hawthorne, trailed dazedly behind.
Book Three
Thirty-Nine
The world was strangely white, so unlike the darkness of Death, so unlike the place where the First Empress’s spirit had waited all these generations for Her awakening, and where only he, among all mortals, had ever been. He could not imagine the power, the wonder that must come to the Empire upon Her return, and his heart stopped beating for a moment as he thought of Keel-Tath’s spirit encased in Esah-Zhurah’s body. He would have given anything, everything he had ever had, to see her in the white robes and slender golden collar, high upon the throne, the most powerful Empress his people had ever known. His only regret would be that he could never again call her by her birth name.
In Her Name Page 72