In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  “You are led this day,” the Empress went on, “by Tesh-Dar, high priestess of the Desh-Ka and a living legend of the sword. Thrill to the song of her blood in battle, My Children, and great honor shall be yours.” She paused, and Tesh-Dar could feel a warm wind stir in her soul as the Empress said, “So has it been, so shall it forever be. Let the Challenge begin.”

  “In Thy name, let it be so,” Tesh-Dar echoed along with the thousands below her.

  Returning her thoughts to the present, Tesh-Dar watched the globe of the human world they sought in a twin of the energy capsule they had sent back with the Messenger. On and above the surface of the planet, fierce battles raged, a simulacrum of what was to begin only moments from now. The great priestess sat in her command chair, her talons scoring the metal of one of the armrests as she absently drummed her fingers on it. She had no idea what awaited them in the system, and her body tingled with eager anticipation at what they might find. Had her instincts been right, and the Messenger well-chosen? Did a war fleet await them, or would these humans succumb to utter obliteration because they refused to rise to battle?

  She was not concerned about dying or even her entire fleet being destroyed, as long as it was lost in battle against a worthy adversary. For that would accomplish what she and her sisters lived and died for: to honor their Empress in battle. In the millennia-long interludes when they had no external enemies to fight, Her Children sought honor through combat in the multitude of arenas throughout the Empire, in ritual battles that were rarely fought to the death.

  That was why this contest brought such a sense of excitement to Tesh-Dar and the warriors she led: this was not simply a ritual contest, but truly war. She could imagine no more terrible, no more glorious pursuit, and her blood raged with expectant fire.

  Holding her breath in anticipation, she watched as the globe of the human world quickly began to darken...

  * * *

  What to do with the artifact had sparked a long and fierce debate throughout the Terran defense community, all the way up to the president. Some had wanted to keep it in Earth space, both to study and to use as an indicator of the progress of the battle in hopes that what would be reflected on the globe after the attack began would show what was really happening, and thus provide real-time intelligence. Others argued that it would make more sense for the expeditionary force to have the artifact for the very same reasons.

  The decision had eventually wound up on the president’s desk. She took less than thirty seconds to decide. “Send it with the fleet,” she ordered as commander-in-chief. “If it provides any sort of warning, they’ll need it a lot more than we will. It won’t do us any good when it would take us a week and a half to get ships there. Assuming we had any more to send.”

  Once that had been determined, others raised concerns about whether it was a bomb. But after a great deal of discussion that essentially went nowhere, Admiral Tiernan decided that if it had been some sort of weapon, the Kreelans could have used it to good effect long before. He ordered that a special instrumentation enclosure be built aboard the flagship to record any emissions or changes in the artifact, and a close watch had been kept every moment since the fleet had jumped from Earth space.

  The fleet had gathered at a point that was a two-hour hyperspace jump from Keran. That was as close as they felt they could come without alerting the colony or the French fleet in-system and creating a diplomatic mess. The Keran and French governments knew, of course, that the Terran expeditionary force had left Earth space, but as long as it stayed clear of the Keran system, no one was likely to complain too loudly.

  Admiral Tiernan was now on the flag bridge of the heavy cruiser Ticonderoga. The flag bridge was a special compartment, separate from the ship’s bridge, that had all the systems his staff needed to help him control the fleet’s operations.

  “What the hell?” someone yelped “Something’s happening!”

  Tiernan snapped his head up to look at the three-dimensional image of the alien orb that was being projected on one of the flag bridge view screens. The globe was quickly darkening, the scene of a world at war being swallowed by infinite black. Then it started to shrink. But it didn’t appear to be just getting smaller. It looked more like it was moving away from them. Tiernan thought it was a trick of the view screen display, but wasn’t sure.

  “What’s happening to it?” He asked one of the battery of scientists who had been monitoring the artifact.

  “Admiral...” the lead scientist replied, then paused as he conferred with the others. “Sir, this is impossible...”

  “Dammit, man, what’s happening?”

  “It’s moving away from us, sir,” the man said, shaking his head. In the view screen, the globe was now the relative size of a marble, and growing smaller by the second. “It can’t be doing what the instruments are saying,” he said, looking up at Tiernan with a helpless expression, “but it is. And it’s accelerating-”

  “Damn!” someone in the background shouted as a thunderous boom echoed from the instrumentation chamber.

  “What was that?” Ticonderoga’s captain interjected worriedly. “Did that thing explode?” The ship’s executive officer was already moving a damage control party in. They weren’t taking any chances on something that, even after all this time, was still a complete unknown.

  “No...” the scientist said, shaken. “That was a sonic boom from within the chamber from displaced air. The globe just...vanished.”

  * * *

  Amiral Jean-Claude Lefevre stood in a moment of tense quiet on the flag bridge of the heavy cruiser Victorieuse, the flagship of the Alliance Française fleet that had been deployed to Keran. Because of the prevailing political conditions, the deployment had been conducted under the guise of joint exercises with the Keran Navy, although everyone knew the cover explanation was a farce. Lefevre twisted his mouth into an ironic grin: any one of his five squadrons, with a total of one hundred and fifty-three naval vessels, was larger than the entire Keran fleet in terms of tonnage. And when one considered that most of the Keran ships were small corvettes with little real combat capability, the “joint” label became rather ludicrous. Nonetheless, the Alliance had taken the Terran information of an alien threat seriously, and Lefevre was trying to do the same.

  Unfortunately, he was terribly frustrated by the total lack of intelligence information. His government believed the possibility of an alien attack was credible, as difficult as he himself found it to believe. But he had no idea of what size force he might be facing, where they might appear in the system, or even what their objective might be, other than the occupation of Keran. And if any of the information he had received about the enemy’s technical capabilities were true, his ships would be so grossly outclassed that the presence of his fleet, the largest assembled since the St. Petersburg war, would be little more than a token gesture of defiance.

  The only concrete information he had was when the attack was to take place. The Terrans had some sort of device that they believed was a countdown timer, an artifact from these so-called “Kreelans.” Terran military authorities provided Avignon’s military attaché on Earth with a digital countdown timer that would approximate the time left, calibrated to the changes shown by the alien device. The time remaining on that digital timer was displayed on every bridge in the Alliance fleet, and he now watched it closely as it wound down to zero.

  “Thirty seconds,” his flag captain said quietly into the mounting tension on the flag bridge. All the ships of the fleet had been at general quarters for the last two hours, as no one was sure how accurate the timer might be. Lefevre’s mouth compressed into a thin line as he stared at the flag bridge tactical display that showed the disposition of his ships. Without having any idea of what the enemy planned or was capable of, his tactical options were very limited. He didn’t want to put his ships in low orbit, deep inside Keran’s gravity well, because even with reactionless drives gravity was a source of drag on a ship’s acceleration potential:
ships farther away from the planet were subject to far less gravity influence and had a tactical advantage when maneuvering. But he also couldn’t put his ships too far out from the planet, or they might not be able to respond rapidly in case the enemy was planning on an orbital bombardment rather than an assault on the surface with ground forces. Having no information about their intentions and capabilities was maddening.

  So he had been forced to compromise. He had divided his fleet into five task forces and placed them around the planet in high orbit to cover the most important population centers on the surface. In low orbit were twenty-four civilian starliners, each carrying a heavy combat brigade and tended by dozens of shuttles that would get the troops down to the surface as quickly as possible if he received permission to deploy them. A flotilla of six destroyers was tasked with protecting the starliners, forming a protective globe around the formation of huge civilian vessels.

  “Fifteen seconds,” the flag captain breathed. Lefevre shot the man a look, more bemused than annoyed, and his flag captain rewarded him with a sheepish grin. None of them wanted to believe anything was going to happen, but the Alliance was deeply worried, or they would not have been willing to absorb the enormous cost of deploying this many ships here. Lefevre watched as the timer counted down: three...two...one...

  “Zero,” he said to himself. “Capitaine Monet,” he said into a comms screen to the ship’s captain who stood tensely on the ship’s bridge, “there are no changes in sensor readings, I assume?”

  “Non, mon amiral,” he replied. “Nothing but merchant traffic coming into the normal inbound jump zones. Three ships in the last two hours.”

  Lefevre sighed. All a wild goose chase, he thought. But it’s just as well. “Very well,” he said. “We will remain at general quarters for another two hours, then resume our planned training-”

  “Amiral!” the flag captain shouted, pointing at the flag bridge tactical display. The ships of the fleet were tied together in a data net, with the sensor readings and targeting data from each ship automatically distributed to the others to maximize situational awareness and coordinate their attacks. One of the task forces on the far side of the planet had picked up a set of bogies - unidentified contacts, presumed hostile - jumping in.

  Lefevre looked up at the display and paled at what he saw. “Oh, mon Dieu...”

  * * *

  Aboard the two-person Terran Hermes class diplomatic courier ship Alita, pilot Amelia Cartwright was just settling down to a delicious dinner of reprocessed steak and potatoes from a foil packet when her copilot, Sid Dougherty, suddenly stiffened like he’d been hit with about ten thousand volts. They were on the modified courier run that had been established a number of weeks before, where at least one courier ship was in orbit and one was in transit at all times. Alita had just arrived the previous day, where she was supposed to remain for a week until their relief arrived.

  “Sid?” she asked, then turned to see what he was staring at. On the monitor that had been installed a few weeks before as part of the ship’s instrumentation upgrade, a wave of red icons had suddenly materialized roughly half a million kilometers from Keran. Inbound enemy ships.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed, tossing her food onto the deck and strapping herself in. “Come on, Sid! Get on the departure checklist and let’s get the hell out of here.” They should be able to get underway in only a couple of minutes. She only hoped they had that long.

  “Got it,” Sid replied, tearing his eyes away from the screen. A tall, lanky Texan who always insisted on wearing a ridiculous-looking cowboy hat, she had never seen him rattled before. “Damn,” he drawled as he quickly punched up the remaining pre-flight checks, “I just never believed this would happen. Look at all those bastards! There must be two hundred ships!”

  “Keran control,” Cartwright called over the planetary navigation network, “this is Terran diplomatic courier ship Alita, requesting emergency departure clearance, outbound vector radial three-five-one mark zero.” The ship’s computer was also sending the information in a more detailed format to its counterpart at Keran control, but it was longstanding tradition to establish positive human-to-human contact, as well.

  “Alita, this is Keran control,” a heavily accented but very pleasant voice replied immediately. “Please hold current position. Alliance fleet elements are on exercise in your sector, and have requested all vessels to remain clear. We will notify you immediately when we can grant departure clearance.”

  Sid glanced at her and shook his head. No goddamn way, he mouthed silently.

  Cartwright paused for just a moment. In the fifteen years that she had been in the diplomatic courier service, she had never once disobeyed a controller. But this time she had no choice: her orders were very explicit, and they were signed by the Secretary of State himself. “Negative, Keran control,” she said as Sid completed the last of the checklist items and gave her the thumbs-up that the ship was ready. She took the controls and poured power to the massive engines, breaking out of her assigned orbital position for open space. “My sincere apologies, but we have to depart immediately. Please inform the Alliance fleet that we’re an outbound friendly. They have enough targets to worry about without wasting munitions on us.”

  She broke off the connection before the controller could reply. “Get me the ambassador,” she told Sid.

  “Already done,” he told her, nodding to a secondary view screen on the console, where the face of a regal-looking older woman calmly looked out at them.

  “Madam Ambassador,” Cartwright said formally, “this is Alita. Be advised that a Kreelan fleet has - repeat, has - arrived in-system, and Alliance fleet units are maneuvering to engage. As you know, we have orders to jump out immediately. You should be receiving a download of all the data that we get until we jump, and if you have any last-minute information you want to send out with us, I request you transmit it immediately.”

  “Thank you, Alita,” Ambassador Irina Pugachova replied. “Our final communiques are being uploaded as we speak, and I thank you for the sensor data. I have instructed our military attaché to provide it directly to the Keran military liaison. What is your assessment of the situation as it stands now?”

  Cartwright tried not to cringe. “Ma’am...there are roughly two hundred enemy ships now in the system. I don’t know how they stack up against what the Alliance has in terms of tonnage and weapons, but the Frenchies are going to have their hands full.”

  Ambassador Pugachova nodded gravely. She looked to the side briefly as someone spoke to her, then turned her attention back to Cartwright. “The invasion alert is being broadcast on the media. At least that did not take too long.” She looked back at Cartwright. “Get to the fleet rendezvous as quickly as you can. Good luck and godspeed, pilot.”

  “Same to you, ma’am,” Cartwright said. The ambassador’s face disappeared as the screen went blank. The connection was closed.

  “Five minutes to jump,” Sid informed her as Alita fled toward open space. Fortunately, the vector Cartwright had chosen was largely free of Alliance ships, and the Kreelans were on the far side of the planet. She watched the sensor display as two of the Alliance task forces that were closest to the mass of Kreelan ships maneuvered, trying to optimize the geometry for deploying their weapons. Two of the other task forces were quickly accelerating around the planet to join the fray, while the last task force remained on station opposite the battle, probably in case the Kreelans tried to flank them with another inbound force.

  In low orbit, the cloud of shuttles hovering around the starliners began to plunge toward the surface, desperately trying to ferry nine heavy divisions to the ground as quickly as possible.

  “One minute,” Sid said quietly, and Cartwright could hear the low thrum of the hyperdrive capacitors spooling up.

  On the sensor screen, the nearest of the Alliance task forces had closed to within weapons range, and ships began to die. The sensor suite was not powerful enough to tell them anything about the we
apons being employed, but icons representing both Alliance and Kreelan ships began to flare on the screen, then disappear.

  Just before her ship jumped, Cartwright saw another cloud of red icons appear right on top of the lone Alliance task force guarding the far side of the planet.

  * * *

  Tesh-Dar’s blood burned like fire as she felt the emotional surge from her sisters throughout the fleet as they began to engage the humans. Having no information on how many forces the humans may have gathered or how they might be deployed, she had settled on a simple strategy that was most likely to ensure rapid contact with at least some of the human ships, assuming there were any. While they knew a great deal about the humans after fully absorbing the information contained in the data of the primitive vessel on which the Messenger had come, there was much about these aliens that remained intriguing unknowns. She had divided the main attack fleet into two groups. The first, with about one hundred and fifty ships, would jump into the target system near the planet’s two small moons to engage any forces there. The second formation of roughly fifty ships, including her flagship, would jump into low orbit.

  She was not disappointed. The group bound for the moons in high orbit arrived first, and Tesh-Dar could feel in the Bloodsong the thrill of the warriors as they found human warships awaiting them. The fleet the humans had assembled was unimpressive, but would provide her warriors with an acceptable challenge. Tesh-Dar could only be pleased.

  As her own group emerged in low orbit, she gasped with pleasant surprise: they had materialized right on top of a formation of human ships!

  “Elai-Tura’an!” she called to the shipmistress, the warrior who was the rough equivalent in human terms to the ship’s captain. “Send forth the boarding parties, then engage at will!”