“Oui, mon capitaine,” she said grimly, already stalking across the hull to the starboard side. “I understand. And I will not fail you.”
* * *
“We’re losing the ship, mon amiral,” Capitaine Monet reported to Lefevre even as screams, very close now, echoed through the blast doors that separated the flag and ship’s bridges from the rest of the ship. The agony in his voice was no different than if his wife lay on an operating table in surgery, dying. “Engineering was under attack and no longer responds, and we have lost maneuvering control. While we still control the ship’s weapons, fewer and fewer of the gun crews answer, and our fire has fallen to almost nothing. The aliens now control the port airlock, and we have lost contact with all the defense teams.” He still had contact with Sabourin, but despite the young woman’s determined vow, he held little hope that she alone could do what he had asked. He knew she would die trying, however, and he could ask no more of any of his crew. He took in a shuddering breath. “I recommend that we abandon ship.”
As if to punctuate Monet’s litany of doom, Victorieuse shuddered from another hit. Lefevre realized now that the fire from the Kreelan vessels was generally not intended to kill his ships, but to wound them enough that the boarding parties would have a better chance to attack. They were like pack animals, one tearing at the prey’s legs to bring it down, while others pounced on its back or went for the throat. He found some solace in the knowledge that, once the threat of the boarders had been taken seriously, only three more ships had fallen victim to them by direct attack.
But for Victorieuse and a dozen or more other ships, it was too late.
His heart heavy, knowing the pain it was causing Monet to even suggest such a thing, he said, “Very well, capitaine.” Turning to his flag captain, he said, “Signal Jean Bart to come alongside to take on survivors from the starboard side airlock; I will transfer my flag to her.” He turned back to the ship’s captain, but Monet was not looking at him.
Behind Lefevre, Monet had seen the port side blast door to the flag bridge suddenly slide open. At the threshold stood a small group of alien warriors. “Get down!” he screamed, tackling Lefevre to the deck as the keening of Kreelan flying weapons filled the flag bridge.
* * *
Li’ara-Zhurah once again found herself facing a determined group of humans, and her blood sang with the joy of battle. While they were pitifully armed with small handguns, the accuracy of the shots by one of the humans was making for a challenging fight. The human animal who had been facing the door that opened onto what must be part of the bridge had flung itself and another of its kind down behind a console, avoiding the volley of shrekkas that her warriors had hurled at the humans inside. But that same human had suddenly peeked above the console and fired his handgun twice, shooting two of her fellow warriors in the head and killing them instantly.
She looked at the three warriors who remained with her. All of them had sustained injuries of one sort or another, bearing witness to the ferocity of the humans, if not their skill. Truly, they were worthy opponents.
Gripping her last shrekka, she quickly peered around the hatch coaming, which was the only cover they had here in the corridor. Her other warriors crouched low to the deck, trying to stay out of sight of the sharpshooter.
She had stuck her head out just far enough to get a glimpse of the console where the two humans had hidden when the human again rose up and squeezed off a round. Had she been just a fraction of a second slower he would have killed her. As it was, she would have a handsome scar across her left cheek where the bullet grazed her. Assuming she survived.
* * *
Monet ducked back down behind the command console. He had surprised the Kreelans with his marksmanship, but he had certainly never expected to use his skills with a pistol, honed during his years of competition while attending university, to defend his ship. He keyed his wrist comm to the ship-wide annunciator circuit. “All hands, this is the captain,” he said urgently. “Abandon ship. Repeat, abandon ship. Make way to the starboard side main airlock. Starboard side only. The port side airlock is controlled by the enemy.” He paused for a moment. “Good luck and godspeed.” Turning to Amiral Lefevre, who crouched next to him, his sidearm drawn and ready, Monet said, “It is time for you to leave, mon amiral. I will cover your withdrawal as best I can. Take the bridge crewmen through the starboard side path to the airlock.”
“Monet...” Lefevre began, then stopped. There was no choice. He hated to leave him here in what could only be a last stand. But Lefevre had an entire fleet to worry about, and every moment counted now if he was to extricate the rest of his ships from certain disaster. “Bonne chance, capitaine,” he said quietly, gripping Monet’s shoulder.
Then, in a crouching run, he made his way forward to the main bridge, gathering the other crewman to him as he went. Only the senior officers had sidearms, and the guns were the only protection any of them had.
With one last look toward where Monet lay waiting for the Kreelans, Lefevre rendered him a salute. The captain returned it with a brave smile and a small wave of his hand.
Once the last member of the bridge crew had crept past him, staying low to keep out of the Kreelans’ line of sight, Lefevre closed the blast door and locked it behind him as a volley of gunshots rang out on the other side.
* * *
While the Victorieuse was not a huge ship compared to some of the gigantic transports and starliners, the hull seemed to stretch for endless kilometers as Sabourin trudged step by exhausting step toward the starboard airlock. Walking in the suit required careful attention to first demagnetize one foot, set it, magnetize it, then demagnetize the other foot to repeat the process. It was dreadfully slow going, and while she was EVA qualified, almost all of her outside operations in a suit had been with a maneuvering pack. This was torture, and a river of sweat was running down her back and between her breasts, and from her forehead into her eyes where it burned like fire. That was perhaps the most frustrating thing, because she had to constantly look around and above for more Kreelan warriors trying to sneak up on her.
But no more had appeared by the time she reached the airlock. With her shotgun held at the ready, although she was not sure her magnetic boots would hold her to the hull against the weapon’s recoil, she opened the outer hatch. It was empty. Stepping inside, she hit the controls to pressurize the lock. She was about to hit the button to open the inner door, then paused. It wouldn’t do to have come all this way just to be shot by someone on the other side of the door, thinking she was a Kreelan. Of course, there could be Kreelans on the far side of the door, too.
Again holding her shotgun at the ready, she activated her suit’s external microphone and punched the button for the airlock intercom. “This is Second-maître Sabourin in the airlock,” she said. “Is anyone there?”
She nearly pulled the trigger of the shotgun as the door suddenly slid open, revealing what looked to be a couple dozen of her shipmates.
“Merde!” she exclaimed to the first of the people who stepped forward to greet her. “I almost blew your head off!” Then she recognized who it was and lowered the shotgun. “Um. Sir,” she added sheepishly.
“You would have been quite right in doing so, petty officer,” Lefevre told her warmly. “My apologies. Sabourin, isn’t it?”
“Oui, mon amiral,” she said, noting how haggard the admiral looked. He had gashes along the side of his face, and his uniform was in tatters.
The admiral glanced down at his uniform and nodded sadly. “We were ambushed by another group of boarders on the way here. We fought them off, but not before they killed another ten members of the crew.” He had two bullets left for his sidearm. It had been a very close thing that any of them had gotten away. That and Sabourin’s shotgun were all they had left. “Jean Bart is to dock any moment, petty officer,” he told her. “I must ask you, as you have the only real weapon left among us, to do what you can to give the crew time to get off.”
; “This is all that is left of us?” she asked in a small voice.
The admiral nodded heavily. “I believe there are more down below, barricaded in some of the engineering spaces. But there are boarding parties between them and us, and we have no weapons to try and fight our way through.” While Lefevre knew that his first concern must be the fleet, if he had more weapons for his companions or a marine detachment on board he would have led them in an attempt to rescue the trapped members of the crew. But to do so unarmed was beyond hopeless. “We have closed the blast doors here in the main gangway, and I have used my override to lock them. But we know the enemy can open locked doors, do we not?”
Sabourin nodded grimly. She knew what he was going to ask before he asked it. “I will hold them off, sir,” she said quietly.
He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed tightly. She could barely feel it through the thick fabric of the suit. “I know you will,” he told her proudly. “It should not be long now.”
Raising her right arm, she saluted him, the gesture awkward in her suit, and he returned it. Then, looking past the crowd of worried faces, she asked him, “Sir, how many doors are there beyond this one that you were able to close and lock?”
“Two,” he told her. “I doubt they will hold them long.”
She pursed her lips, thinking. “Amiral, if you would, please open this door. I believe I have a plan that may buy us a bit more time.”
* * *
Now at the tail of a group of a dozen warriors pursuing the remaining human survivors of the crew, Li’ara-Zhurah felt a quickening in her breast. The battle to take the bridge, while brief, had been exquisite. The lone human with a pistol had killed two of the other warriors when they had all attacked. Li’ara-Zhurah fought him in hand to hand combat to honor his skill. Such fighting clearly had not been his strength, but he still fought with spirit, and to her that mattered a great deal more. The outcome of that particular contest had never been in question. But when she finally rammed her outstretched fingers into the human’s chest, her talons piercing his heart, it was with regret, for he had allowed Li’ara-Zhurah and the others to bring great glory to the Empress in the fight to overpower him.
And now, the battle to take the ship was almost over. She was exhausted and in great pain from her wounds, but her Bloodsong filled her spirit and merged with the infinite chorus of her sisters. No greater ecstasy had she ever known.
The warriors at the head of the group, senior to Li’ara-Zhurah in their order of the challenges fought for the honor to be in this first great battle, opened yet another door the humans had locked behind them. It was a crude if effective tactic to buy some time, but she did not know what they expected to accomplish: herded now to the ship’s main starboard airlock, there was nowhere else for them to run.
She heard the warriors at the head of the group sing out with battle cries: the humans were before them! She let herself be swept along as the group surged forward, swords held high.
* * *
Sabourin stood alone in the passageway as the Kreelans forced open the door in front of her. Behind her, the last blast door in the main gangway stood open, with the terrified faces of the crew’s survivors looking past her as they stood with their backs pressed up against the rear wall that held the airlock. She had confirmed through her suit radio that Jean Bart, one of Victorieuse’s sister ships, was moving close aboard to extend a flexible dock. But they still needed just a few more precious minutes.
She held the shotgun at her side. She would use it at the last moment if she had to, but she was hoping that the Kreelans would not decide to send their flying weapons at her if she posed no direct threat. If they did and they killed her off first thing, her plan might not work so well. She grinned at her own morbid humor.
She had wondered if her presence, particularly while still wearing the suit (which was nearly out of air), would give the enemy pause. But it had the opposite effect: with a howl, they charged forward en masse, driven to a frenzy by the sight of the helpless crewmen behind her.
And so they never noticed the circle of putty-like material as they ran forward, at least until Sabourin pushed the single button on the electronic device that had been in the pouch with the putty strip. With a flash that seemed as bright as the sun, the boarding charge exploded into white-hot flame, burning the flesh of half the Kreelans still charging toward her.
As the aliens’ battle cries turned to screams of agony, she flung herself out of the way, against the bulkhead with the open blast door leading to where her fellow crewmen waited, willing bait for her trap.
Kneeling down, Sabourin brought up her shotgun and began to fire into the mass of burning alien warriors.
* * *
Calling to the warriors ahead of her, trying to find out what had happened, Li’ara-Zhurah could get no answer. All she could see were silhouettes of warriors dancing amid white-hot flame, and her ears were deafened by shrieks of agony. The air was thick with the stench of burning meat, metal, and hair, and she instinctively backed up, away from the carnage ahead of her. Whatever had happened, her sense of honor did not dictate that she immolate herself.
Then she heard the booms of one of the human weapons, and caught site of the lone suited human, kneeling to the side of the open door. She was firing into her sisters, which to a warrior such as Li’ara-Zhurah was a mixed blessing in such a horrid situation: being killed by a weapon such as the human wielded would be no small blessing to those whose bodies were now burning like living torches.
But even had that thought not stayed her hand for a moment, she had no shrekkas left. The human was beyond her reach unless she wished to brave the fire.
Then it struck her what the fire truly was: one of the boarding charges. With widening eyes, she looked at the human in the suit again, still firing into the churning mass of her sisters, noting the crudely rigged tether that held the human to the bulkhead. And around the open hatchway that led to the airlock, where the other humans cowered, Li’ara-Zhurah saw the trace of one of their own portable airlocks. Transparent and hardly visible at this distance.
It was a trap.
“Oh, no,” she breathed, backing up toward the next blast door. “Pull back, my sisters!” she screamed over the din. “Pull back!” Hissing in fear and rage, she grabbed two of the closest warriors and pulled them back with her to the bulkhead behind her. There was no telling how thick the hull was here, and so how long the charge would take to breach-
With a thunderous roar, a two meter diameter section of the deck dropped away, blasted into space by air pressure. With screams of surprise now blending with those of agony, the rest of the warriors who were still alive were sucked out the hole in the deck to their doom.
The two warriors she had just pulled back had failed to grab hold of anything, and both lost their footing and tumbled across the deck to disappear into the infinite void beyond. Li’ara-Zhurah had seized the bulkhead wall with one hand, gripping it so fiercely that her diamond-hard talons dug into the metal. With a supreme force of will, fighting against the pain of her eardrums bursting and the air being sucked out of her lungs, she pulled herself to the door controls and slammed her hand down on the various buttons until, to her great relief, the door began to close.
As it did, Li’ara-Zhurah caught a last glimpse of the human in the suit, who had acted as bait for the trap. The human gave her what appeared to be a salute: she held one arm straight out in front of her, the hand clenched in a fist, before she brought her other hand over onto the extended arm just above the elbow. Then she swung up her clenched fist as the door slammed shut.
* * *
“Va te faire foutre,” Sabourin gasped at the lone surviving warrior before she disappeared behind the closing blast door. Go fuck yourself.
All the other warriors were gone, swept down through the hole she had burned through the deck and the hull. Sabourin had hated to hurt the Victorieuse that way, but there was nothing for it.
Staggering to her feet, s
he undid the tether, still surprised that it had held when the hull gave way. Then she stumbled to the outer membrane, opening it only with great difficulty. The admiral and crew, while frightened when the air had exploded from the hull and snapped the inner membrane taut, had survived. Her plan had worked.
Her fingers were numb and her breathing was coming in quick gasps now: her suit was out of air. But if she didn’t make it through the outer membrane, no one inside would be able to come get her. Glancing through to the airlock, she saw that Amiral Lefevre stood there, waiting for her. The other members of the crew had been ushered into the link to the Jean Bart, so they were safe, at least for the moment.
After what seemed like days, she finally sealed the outer membrane behind her. But she had strength for nothing more. Her hands reflexively going to her neck, she slumped to the floor, her vision darkening as her brain began to run out of oxygen.
She felt more than heard the pop of air as the inner membrane was opened, filling the outer bubble where she lay with air. Then someone undogged her helmet and pulled it off. Taking in huge lungfuls of air, she found Lefevre looking down at her with a warm smile on his battered face.
“Come along, Sabourin,” he said kindly, shooing away the crewmen from the Jean Bart who had come to help. He lifted her to her feet, draping one of her arms over his shoulders as he gripped her tightly by the waist to help her to the other ship. “I think you have done enough for one day.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Admiral Tiernan stared grimly at the tactical data that the crew of Alita had brought from Keran. While the information was priceless, it was also dangerously out of date: even in the two hours that it had taken Alita to reach the rendezvous point, the battle could have been lost or won. Tiernan was a gambling man, a superb poker player, and he wouldn’t have put much money on the Alliance fleet from the replay of the first few minutes of the battle. Even though their ships were good, and he knew the Alliance had many first-rate naval officers, it was clear from the information before him that they were also outnumbered two-to-one, and the French commander had placed himself at a tremendous disadvantage by splitting his forces. Had he kept his fleet intact in high orbit rather than distributing his squadrons around the planet, he would have been able to concentrate enough combat power to fight at even odds with the larger Kreelan task force, and would have been able to completely overwhelm the smaller one. Unless the French admiral had pulled a rabbit out of a hat, he was going to be feeding his squadrons piecemeal to the enemy. And that was assuming that any of them stood a chance in hell against the Kreelans’ technology.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 24