In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  He was down to only four Marines in the short time they’d been inside the Kreelan ship. The enemy warriors were beyond fanatical in their defense. They were completely outclassed by the Marines in their combat armor with their recoilless rifles, and still they were murderous opponents. Even after the Marines blew a compartment open to the vacuum of space, the female warriors, without suits, attacked them with swords and claws as they were blown out into space. Two of his people had died that way, their suits slashed open as the enemy went flying past.

  The Marines had blasted their way through the hatchways of the ship as they moved aft as quickly as they could, trying to reach the ship’s engine room. Ruiz had figured the bridge was probably much farther forward, and at the rate his people were being killed, they’d never make it. And they didn’t have time. He knew the ship would be in range of the fleeing shuttles any moment now.

  “Down, gunny!” one of his men shouted as a warrior wearing a combat suit hurled herself at Ruiz from around the bend in a passageway.

  Ruiz dropped to the deck, but it was the wrong move: he landed right on the Kreelan weapon still embedded in his chest and drove it even deeper. He was momentarily paralyzed with agony as the Kreelan fell on top of him.

  His Marines couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting him, but he wasn’t important. “Forget about me!” he ground out through the pain as he fought to roll over so he could fight the alien. “Find the goddamn engine room! No time left!”

  The four other Marines paused only for a second before following their orders, blasting their way through the passageways leading aft.

  Using his massive upper body strength, Ruiz managed to push himself up off the deck, the warrior still writhing on top of him, and flip over, slamming his right elbow as hard as he could into her midsection. The warrior’s armor absorbed the blow, but it gave him what he really wanted: just a few extra centimeters of room. He rolled back in the opposite direction, careful to keep his chest and the protruding weapon clear of the deck, then leapt on top of her before she could regain her feet. He clung desperately to her armored gloves, which were made to allow her razor-sharp talons to show through the fingertips of the metal and fabric. Using his superior weight, he shoved her to the floor, howling in pain as the throwing weapon was again driven deeper into his chest, the tip burying itself in the bone of his sternum.

  Ironically, the inhumanly sharp blades that were sticking out were equally effective against Kreelan armor, and he watched with satisfaction as they sliced through his opponent’s armor as well as his own. The blades didn’t penetrate deep, but far enough: he suddenly yanked himself backward, pulling the blades out of the alien’s suit.

  Air rushed from her suit, crystals of water forming as the moisture in the suit’s air froze almost instantly. He pinned her to the deck until she stopped twitching.

  As he struggled to get up, he found two more suited warriors waiting for him, swords drawn.

  He was just bringing up his rifle when a churning wall of fire exploded through the passageway from the aft end of the ship, testimony to the handiwork of his Marines.

  * * *

  “You’re clear,” the controller on the Guadalcanal informed the assault boat pilots. “The enemy ship that was on your tail is losing way.”

  The pilots didn’t need to hear it from the carrier, as the enemy warship had gotten close enough for them to track it on the boat’s sensors. Both pilots breathed a heavy sigh of relief when they saw the ship’s icon suddenly slow down, rapidly falling behind them.

  “We’re actually going to make it,” the pilot murmured, holding his hand down to his side out of sight and crossing his fingers. “Tell the McClaren that we’re good for the bar tab in any port,” he told the controller on the carrier. On the sensor display, he saw the icons representing the other shuttles climbing toward the still-invisible carriers. By his count, all but two had made it.

  “Nice thought, but it looks like there are going to be some empty chairs around the table,” the controller told him, his voice tinged with regret. “The McClaren rammed the other ship, then they separated and it looks like her drives have failed. She’s not going to make it.”

  Hearing the words of the controller, Steph sat bolt upright from where she had slumped down to the deck. “We have to go back,” she told the pilots. “We have to go back to the McClaren.”

  Both pilots stared at her. “Are you crazy?” the boat’s command pilot said. “You see that?” he said, pointing to a blue icon just at the edge of the boat’s forward sensor display that had Guadalcanal marked under it. “That’s our carrier. They’re going to leave us behind if we aren’t aboard in about ten minutes.”

  “The people on that ship saved our lives,” she argued. “We can help them. This boat has plenty of room for the survivors-”

  “There’s no time!” the pilot told her. “I’m sorry,” he said, his apology utterly sincere. “I appreciate their sacrifice and what they did to save us. I really do. But it won’t help them if we mount a rescue only to have all of us get left behind.” He glanced at the other faces looking into the cockpit hatch and listening, the few surviving NCOs of the Legion and the 7th Cavalry. “Guadalcanal and the other carriers have direct orders from Admiral Tiernan that they are not to wait for stragglers.”

  “Please,” she said, turning to Mills for support. “I know it’s a risk, but we’ve got to go back. Ichiro Sato is on that ship along with the rest of the crew. None of us would have had a chance at all in this fight if it weren’t for him.”

  Sato’s name had an immediate effect on everyone who could hear Steph’s voice. He was the prophet who had brought warning of the coming invasion. As with most prophets, few had believed his prophecy, and most had scorned and ridiculed him. The haggard men and women on the assault boat, however, had become true believers after coming face to face with the Kreelan nightmare.

  “I think we’ll go back, then,” Mills said casually. “Shouldn’t leave a lad like that go to waste. What say you, sergent chef?” he asked the ranking Legion NCO standing next to him.

  The man answered without hesitation. “Oui. We go back.”

  Nodding their heads in agreement, the other NCOs representing the 7th Cavalry gave their support.

  “This isn’t a fucking democracy,” the pilot told them hotly. “I’m the commander of this boat, and we have orders to return to Guadalcanal. And that’s what we’re-”

  He froze as Mills smoothly raised his assault rifle and pressed the muzzle against the pilot’s helmet. “Look, mate,” he said in a low voice, “the more you flap those gums of yours the less time we have to pick up those fellows on that ship back there. If you or your friend here,” he glanced at the copilot, who was staring down the muzzle of a weapon held by one of the 7th Cav NCOs, “utter one more word before you turn this tub around, I’ll blow your bloody fucking head off. And please don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t pull the trigger.”

  The pilot’s mouth worked for a moment, but in the end he decided that discretion was the better part of valor. With a helpless, angry look at his copilot, he turned back to the ship’s controls and turned them around.

  Steph watched the starfield turn beyond the ship’s cockpit window, praying that Ichiro was still alive.

  * * *

  Aboard McClaren, a very one-sided battle raged in the passageways and compartments of the stricken ship. While the crew fought bravely, they weren’t trained as Marines. And without Ruiz and the others in their armored vacuum suits, the Kreelan warriors held the advantage. The McClaren’s crewmen were killing the aliens, but not fast enough, and too many of the defending sailors were dying in the process.

  Sato’s team had managed to hold off the advance of the Kreelans who were trying to come down the passageway his men and women were defending, but he was suspicious: they hadn’t been trying as hard as he thought they might. His sailors had killed three or four as they tried to force themselves around a turn, but aside from occasiona
lly peering out to see if the humans were still there, they were staying put.

  From the sounds coming from other parts of the ship, the same was clearly not true. Sato had sent two men as runners to find the other teams and report what was happening; neither had returned. The bark of automatic weapons and the explosion of grenades echoed through the metal of the bulkheads and the deck, clear indications of savage fighting.

  Then he heard something that was at once familiar, and totally unexpected: the distant mechanical clank of docking clamps.

  “Jesus,” one of the crewmen cried, “one of their ships has docked with us!”

  “They couldn’t,” one of the others said. “The only airlock that’s left is the auxiliary in the after engine room. They couldn’t dock with it.”

  “They can do anything,” Sato whispered, more to himself than to the others, as one of the Kreelans quickly peered around the corner, then darted back as she was met with another fusillade of rifle fire; Sato’s team had already run out of grenades.

  He felt a change in the tempo of the fighting in the other parts of the ship, mostly aft of where they were. “Engineering,” he said. “They’ve broken through to engineering!” Turning to the senior rating, one of the ship’s computer engineers, he said, “Take the team back to help DeFusco. If they take engineering...” He didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” she said. “But what about you? You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head as he stood up and handed her what was left of his ammunition. He dropped the empty rifle to the deck. “I’ll buy you a little time.”

  “But...”

  “Go on,” he told her quietly. “Save our ship.”

  Tears brimming in her eyes, the sailor turned and led the others back down the passageway toward the thundering fight that was raging near the engineering section.

  Sato drew his katana, then placed the lacquered scabbard carefully on the deck. It would be destroyed with the rest of the ship when the enemy overpowered the crew, but even in his final moments he would never dream of treating it with disrespect by thoughtlessly casting it aside.

  The katana held confidently in his hands, he stepped forward into the passageway to face the warriors awaiting him.

  * * *

  The first men and women to board the McClaren were almost cut down by the skeleton crew in engineering who expected nothing other than a flood of enemy warriors, that they themselves had not yet seen in the flesh, to come streaming through the airlock. They stared in open-mouthed surprise and wonder at the ragged legionnaires and cavalrymen who quickly marched aboard.

  “Heard you could use a bit of a hand,” Mills told a female engineer, a petty officer, who looked to be in charge.

  “Jesus,” DeFusco said, shaking her head. “I just don’t believe it.”

  “Let’s get a move on, shall we? Allez!” Mills said, and the legionnaires began to move to the forward end of the engine room, their weapons ready, the cavalrymen right beside them. They didn’t need anyone to steer them through the ship. They could clearly hear the sounds of the fighting going on, and did as many soldiers have done through history: they marched toward the sound of the guns.

  “Get your people aboard,” Steph said, gesturing toward the waiting airlock.

  “I can’t leave,” DeFusco told her bluntly. “I won’t leave the ship until we’ve got everyone back.”

  “Then get your people into the boat and wait by the airlock,” Steph told her, knowing exactly how she felt. “We don’t have much time. I’ll stay with you in case the Kreelans poke their heads in here.” She gestured with her rifle, and DeFusco could tell she must have used it plenty already. The woman’s hands were nearly black with dirt and residue from firing the weapon’s caseless cartridges, and the rest of her wasn’t much better. She was a complete mess, and judging from the sunken look of her eyes must have been running on nothing but fumes.

  “You’re that reporter woman, aren’t you?” DeFusco suddenly realized. “The one that Lieutenant...I mean, Captain Sato was, um...”

  Steph offered her a tired smile. “You can say it,” she said. “We were dating. But captain? And did he...did he make it?”

  “Yes on both counts,” DeFusco said, a look of concern shadowing her face as she hustled the remaining members of the engineering crew past her into the waiting boat, “at least when I saw him last, leading a team forward to defend the ship. A ship’s captain. And a damn good one, at that.”

  * * *

  Mills and the other soldiers didn’t have far to go to find the enemy. While none of the men and women who now swarmed through the passageways out of engineering and into what was left of the forward part of the ship had any experience in shipboard fighting, it was close enough to urban combat, with which most of them did have experience, that they adapted quickly. They also had the advantages of surprise and weight of numbers.

  As they reached the survivors of the crew’s defense teams, which were now down to a handful of men and women, the soldiers sent them aft to the assault boat.

  Then the legionnaires and cavalrymen began to mercilessly cut down the boarders, blasting them into bloody pulp through sheer weight of fire from their assault rifles.

  * * *

  Sato was ready. He was prepared to die and join the ghosts who still haunted his dreams from the Aurora, where part of his soul had been lost forever. He had no regrets, save that he had never told Steph how much he really loved her. He knew she would understand, and hoped with all his heart that she had survived the disaster that had befallen the troops on the ground. He would have given anything to be with her now, but he knew that wasn’t his destiny.

  Four warriors stood before him in the passageway, having left their bulky armored vacuum suits behind. Two stepped forward, their black armor and the silvery blades of their weapons gleaming, while the others held back.

  Standing in a ready position, his legs spread forward and back and bent slightly, ready to spring, Sato held his sword in a two-handed grip, down low on his right, the blade’s tip pointing diagonally toward the deck. He knew his skills could not compare to the warriors he faced, but he would go down fighting. His sensei had given him that much.

  That was what he thought up until the moment that the warriors, all of them, knelt down before him.

  * * *

  Taylan-Murir was a well-seasoned warrior with skills and scars from the many Challenges fought during her life. Like all others who had come here, save the great priestess and the senior shipmistress of the fleet, she had fought many for the honor to face the Empire’s latest enemy.

  But this honor was entirely unexpected. As she and her three sisters came upon this particular group of human defenders, she sensed something in one of the animals.

  They had come upon the Messenger.

  She and her sisters would not have been able to explain how they knew this, for, as with many things for their ancient race, what once might have required thought and understanding or visible technology to achieve now simply was. He carried no mark, nor did she recognize his face, homely and pale as it was to her eyes. But Taylan-Murir knew that this human was the Messenger as surely as she knew her own name. So did her fellow warriors, and so, too, did every member of the fleet - indeed, her entire race - as her Bloodsong echoed her wonder and surprise. It was a great honor to be in the presence of a Messenger, and it was forbidden to bring one to harm. Indeed, it was unthinkable. Thus they had been careful to hold the humans at bay, but had not pressed their attack for fear of harming him.

  This Messenger, she knew, was different from all others who had come before in her civilization’s half-million year history: he held a sword and clearly understood how to use it, and to die by his hand would be a very great honor.

  Trembling with pride, she and her sisters knelt before him, waiting for his blade to fall.

  * * *

  “No,” Sato whispered as the Kreelans kneeled on
the deck, their heads bowed in respect as if he were a lord come to call. He knew this wasn’t just a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

  While most might have felt relief at such a reprieve, Sato felt a burning anger that rose into a fiery rage. He wanted a chance to prove himself, to take himself back to the sands of the arena where his shipmates from the Aurora had fought and died. He wanted to avenge their ghosts. “Get up!” he shouted at them, not caring that they couldn’t understand his words. “Get on your feet and fight!”

  The four warriors made no move, but were still as statues carved from the deepest ebony.

  Rushing forward to the first one, the one he took to be their leader, he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. “Fight me, damn you!” He slammed the guard of his sword into her chest, knocking her back a step, trying to force a reaction from her.

  But she again sank to her knees, and never met his gaze.

  With a roar of anger and frustration, he yanked her to her feet once more, and put the blade of his sword to her throat above her collar and its glittering pendants, the razor sharp blade drawing a line of blood. Grabbing her chin, he forced her face up to look at his, and for a moment their eyes met. He knew he couldn’t read her body language and expressions, but he had no doubt of what he saw in those cat-like eyes that were at once totally alien, yet had a sense of captivating beauty: pure, utter ecstasy, as if she were enjoying a high from some alien drug.

  He pressed the sword’s blade harder against her neck, deepening the wound, her blood running over her collar and down her chest under the breast plate. “Fight me,” he hissed once more.

  She only sighed as she stood there, trembling not with fear, but with pleasure, her weapon held loosely at her side, here eyes locked on his.

  Finally, Sato let her go. The warrior sank to her knees, and then bowed her head to the floor. He thought briefly about trying to provoke the others into attacking, but knew it would be fruitless.

  He also considered simply killing them, slicing through their necks with his sword, just like he had practiced under his sensei’s supervision, chopping cleanly through targets of tightly woven fiber wound around a bamboo pole. Tightening his grip on his katana, he raised it over his head, preparing to kill her.