In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  “...three...two...one,” the computer said. “Normal space emergence.”

  Hyperspace dissolved into a panorama of the deepest black, and where Keran should be was...

  “Holy Mother of God,” Sid, now a lieutenant, junior grade in the Navy, breathed beside her.

  The surface of Keran, the outlines of its continents where land met the sea, had changed. The deserts that had been turning dark were now gone, replaced by plains of grass. The ship’s telescope array hunted the unfamiliar landscape for the major cities. Even during the last mission, they had still been clearly visible, even as burned out scars in the landscape. Now...they were gone, erased as if they had never existed.

  “Jesus,” Cartwright whispered. “How is this possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Sid told her, his eyes wide, frightened by the changes in the planet below. “And it looks like they have more ships.”

  The tactical display showed nearly two hundred ships in near-Keran space and around its moons. The ship’s telescope array took images of them, as well. As with the planet’s deserts earlier, both moons were being consumed by a sea of blackness, some unknown and unfathomable material that denied its secrets to human science.

  “Just a suggestion,” Sid told her tightly as Nyx sped ever closer to the planet and the warships sailing around it, “but wouldn’t it be a good idea to jump out?”

  “Not yet,” she said, adjusting the ship’s course minutely. “I want to get all the data we can. Are you picking up any signals?” On previous missions, they had always been able to contact someone on the surface.

  Sid didn’t answer her right away as he worked the ship’s instruments. After a few precious minutes, he said, “Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”

  They shared a glance, then looked back at the globe of the planet, now alien and forbidding. Cartwright’s hands clenched as she fought to keep her emotions under control. She knew that there were most likely still survivors on the planet, fleeing or fighting for their lives. But during the last reconnaissance mission they had picked up hundreds of different transmitters, radio and laser-links. Now there was nothing but shattering silence. Survivors there might yet be, but the silence on the airwaves told how effective the Kreelans had been in hunting them down.

  Nyx flew onward for another minute, then two, when half a dozen of the cruisers that were headed to intercept her were almost close enough to fire.

  “Time to go, boss,” Sid reminded her.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Cartwright said grudgingly as she hauled the ship around in a tight chandelle turn.

  Five long minutes later they reached their jump point, and Nyx disappeared into hyperspace.

  * * *

  Tesh-Dar stood upon the central dais of one of the arenas on this, the newest world to be claimed for the Empire. Reshaping this planet was a a reflection of the compulsion of her race to bend the universe to their will. It was not for want of more living space: the Empire was so vast that Tesh-Dar could have traveled most of her life in the swiftest of starships, and still not reached from one far frontier to the other. The Empire spanned ten thousand suns and even more planets. When there had been need of a world for a particular purpose, or in a particular place as suited the Empress, often as not the builders had simply created it. Such was the power of Her Children.

  But her race lived and breathed for battle. And here on this planet, in this arena, the final battle was being fought, pathetic though it had become. A brace of her warriors, using only the weapons they had been born with, faced off against the last human survivors. They had been very adept at evading their hunters, but at last Tesh-Dar had called an end to the game. Great wheels were turning in the heart of the Empire, and this first great combat between humans and Her Children was to be brought to a final ending.

  The humans before her were dirty and starving. A ten of males and half as many females were all that remained of the planet’s original population. In the many matches Tesh-Dar had watched as the humans had been sacrificed to the demands of the Way of her people, she had seen many fight bravely; some had clearly cried for mercy, of which there was none; others stood with what she admired as a quiet dignity, refusing to fight, until they at last were painlessly put to death. None were tortured or forced to endure pain beyond what was experienced in battle in the arena. Tesh-Dar understood the concept of cruelty, but did not believe it applied to her people. Their Way was extraordinarily difficult, and death came all too easily. But pain was never inflicted needlessly, or as an end unto itself.

  One by one, the humans fell to her warriors. But these humans, the last upon this planet, did not give up, and did not surrender. They fought to the last, and died with honor.

  * * *

  In the capital city on his home planet of Nagano, Commander Ichiro Sato ignored the veiled stares he received as he made his way along a crowded street that led to his childhood home. He wore his dress black uniform, which made him stand out even more among the dour salarymen in cheap suits and the women in colorful kimonos, eyes downcast, who streamed past him. Around his neck he wore the Terran Medal of Honor, the only one to be granted for the battle of Keran that wasn’t posthumous. He hadn’t known most of those who had received “The Medal,” as it was often called. But his own decoration served to remind him of the one he had: Gunnery Sergeant Pablo Ruiz. Sato’s recommendation to award Ruiz The Medal had been taken up-chain almost without comment, followed by Silver Stars for bravery in the face of the enemy for every man and woman of McClaren’s Marine detachment. Ensign, now Lieutenant, Bogdanova and Senior Chief Petty Officer DeFusco also wore Silver Stars, and every single survivor of the McClaren had received at least a Bronze Star. They had all earned it. And more.

  Walking beside him, Stephanie held an exquisitely wrapped gift. She and Sato had spent nearly an hour getting the wrapping just so. She had thought it a fun but ultimately wasteful use of time, until he explained how important the wrapping of a gift was in Nagano’s culture, and that it was as important as the gift itself.

  And the gift? Two fresh pineapples in a box. She had laughed at him when he had first suggested it, but he was completely serious. “Listen, I know you don’t believe this,” he had told her, “but this is perfect! She absolutely loves pineapple, and they’re almost impossible to get on Nagano. My uncle managed to get some a few times - that’s where she first tasted it - but he must have paid a fortune.”

  “She,” of course, was his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since he had left for the Terran Naval Academy. Steph had suggested some gorgeous jewelry, but he only shook his head. “She doesn’t wear any.” It was hard for Steph to conceive of any woman not wanting to wear jewelry, but she had let it ride and trusted Ichiro’s advice. He hadn’t steered her wrong yet.

  A few weeks before, they had both been at the commissioning of the first of the new shipyards that were being built in Earth orbit, where the keels of a dozen new warships were being laid down in a fast-build program that would have the new ships undergoing their first space trials in three months. One of them, the heavy cruiser Yura, would be Ichiro’s to command.

  The ceremony had been held on Africa Station, which, like the other orbital transfer points, was being radically enlarged to accommodate more traffic. While most of the attention had been riveted on the massive yards and the ships that were even now beginning to take shape, Sato had spent a considerable part of the ceremony staring out at the hulk of the Aurora, which rode quietly at anchor in the original space dock. The Navy had decided that she would never sail again, and would eventually be broken up. Part of him would have exchanged his new heavy cruiser for the old Aurora in an instant; another part was horrified at the thought of ever again setting foot on her decks.

  Despite the maudlin thoughts about his old ship amid the martial pomp of the commissioning ceremony for the shipyards, the gathering on Africa Station was also one of joy: to a great deal of well-wishing and cat-calling, he and Steph announced their engagement and plans to
marry. After returning from Keran, they quickly came to the conclusion that they were meant for each other. With him in command of a warship and her helping the government get people behind the formation of the Confederation, their married life would be difficult, to say the least. But they were determined to make it work. They knew now that the universe was not a hospitable place, and it was an immense comfort just knowing that they had each other to love and hold onto.

  They arrived at the drab apartment building and rode up the cramped elevator to the fifteenth floor. Everything here was clean, almost antiseptic in appearance. And quiet. Their footsteps echoed as they walked down the tiled hall until they reached a certain door.

  Looking one last time at Steph, who only nodded, Ichiro pressed the illuminated button that would let the occupants know they had visitors.

  After a brief moment, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman of Japanese descent, not so different in appearance from a million others in the city. Physically she was still in the prime of beauty for those of her age, her face showing few wrinkles and only faint traces of gray in her otherwise lush raven hair. But her expression and eyes were blank, her thoughts and emotions carefully concealed, a defense mechanism developed over a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse.

  “Greetings, Mother,” Ichiro said in Japanese, bowing his head.

  For a moment, she said nothing, did nothing. She made no reaction at all. Then the veneer that had been her shield against the pain of her life, built up over decades, suddenly shattered and fell away.

  In that moment, she did what no self-respecting Nagano woman, even one who had been widowed only a week before when her hated husband had died of a burst aneurysm, would ever have admitted to: she burst into tears and took her only son in her arms.

  LEGEND OF THE SWORD

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tesh-Dar, high warrior priestess of the Desh-Ka, strode quietly along the paths of the Imperial Garden. Protected by a great crystalline dome that reached far into the airless sky of the Empress Moon, the stones that made up the ages-old walkways had come from every planet touched by the Empire. The paths wove their way in a carefully designed pattern for leagues: had Tesh-Dar been of a mind and had the luxury of time, she could have wandered in contemplative peace for an entire cycle and still not fully explored it all. Cut from lifeless rocks adrift in deep space to planets teeming with the fruits of galactic evolution, each stone was a testament to the glory of the Empire and the power of the Empress. Rutted sandstone to crystalline matrix, each told part of the Empire’s long and glorious history.

  In Tesh-Dar’s mind, each step also brought her people closer to their End of Days.

  Like the stones, the flora of the Garden was made up of every species of plant that flowered from across the Empire. From gigantic trees that reached up to the top of the great dome to tiny algae, all were preserved for the pleasure and the glory of the Empress. Even species that were incompatible with the atmosphere natural to Her Children were here, protected by special energy bubbles that preserved them in their native atmosphere and soil, carefully tended by the army of clawless ones whose lives were devoted to this task.

  Many of the stones she trod upon were from worlds that had been one-time enemies of the Empire, including the dozen or so species Her Children had fought in past ages since the Kreela had attained the stars. Now the stones and flora the gardeners tended here were all that was left of them. Some of those ancient civilizations had fought to the last against the swords of Her Children, and were now remembered with honored reverence. Others, broken and beaten, consigning themselves to defeat, had been obliterated by the will of the Empress, their worlds left as nothing more than molten slag, barren of all life. The last such war had ended thousands of generations before Tesh-Dar was born, and some living now thought the records of them in the Books of Time were only legend. Tesh-Dar, greatest of the living warrior priestesses and elder blood sister to She Who Reigns, knew better. There was much in the Books of Time that she fervently wished was nothing more than legend, but wishing did not make it so.

  She strolled to a part of the path that was newly added, made up of stones from the planet the humans had called Keran. The rocks and the flora from that world were no more or less remarkable than the other specimens in the Garden, save that they had been taken in a war whose birth she had witnessed, a war in which she would likely die. Now Keran, too, was part of the Empire. The many humans who had lived there, and many who had come from other worlds to aid them, had died at the hands of Tesh-Dar’s warriors, and the builder caste had since reshaped the planet in a way more pleasing to Her Children. The reshaping had been done more out of habit than out of need: the Empire had enough worlds on which to live, for as long as her race had left.

  Tesh-Dar paused as she stood upon these tokens of Keran in her sandaled feet. The humans had impressed the great priestess: even at the last — exhausted, desperate, and afraid — they had resisted. And those who had come from across the stars to help them, sailing in primitive vessels and fighting with weapons the Empire had retired tens of thousands of cycles before, had fought tenaciously for a world that was not their own. The Empress, too, had been greatly pleased. Yet it did nothing to ease the worry in Tesh-Dar’s heart. As the highest-ranking warrior of her entire race, standing only two steps from the throne, Tesh-Dar bore the greatest responsibility for helping to preserve her people and carry out the will of the Empress. But their greatest enemy was not the humans. It was time.

  “Why is your heart troubled so, priestess of the Desh-Ka?” the Empress said quietly from behind her.

  Tesh-Dar turned and knelt before her sovereign. She had sensed the Empress approaching, of course. While they were sisters born of the same womb, although many cycles apart, She Who Reigned was Mother to them all. United by the ethereal force that was the Bloodsong, the members of their species were both individuals and part of a greater spiritual whole, of which She was the heart. Their purpose for existence was driven by the will of the living Empress, who contained the souls of every Empress who had lived since the founding of the Empire a hundred thousand cycles before. Her body held all of their souls, save one: the First Empress, the most powerful of all, and the one they sought for their very salvation.

  “My Empress,” Tesh-Dar said reverently as she saluted, bringing her left fist in its armored gauntlet against her right breast, the smooth black metal of her armor ringing in the quiet of the Garden. She had been in the presence of the Empress many times over her long life, but each time was as the very first. She felt a surge of primal power, as if she were standing close to a spiritual flame, which, in a sense, she was. “The humans have given us hope,” she said, “yet I fear that we will not find what we must in the time we have left.”

  “Walk with me, daughter,” said the Empress, holding out her arm. Tesh-Dar gently took it, careful not to mar her sovereign’s flawless blue skin with her long black talons, and they walked slowly together along this section of the path that was now a remembrance of their first conquest among the humans.

  The two were a study in contrasts. While Tesh-Dar had the smooth cobalt blue skin and felinoid eyes shared by all of her race, she stood more than a head taller than most warriors and was wrapped in powerful muscle that made her the most powerful of her species, equal in raw strength to half a dozen warriors. She was clad in traditional ceremonial armor that was as black as night and yet shone like a mirror, with the rune of her order, the Desh-Ka, emblazoned in cyan on the breastplate. Her hair, black as was the norm for her people, hung in elegant braids, so long now that they were carefully looped around her upper arms. That was the only way any of Her Children wore their hair, for it was more than simply a legacy from some long-forgotten biological ancestor who needed it for warmth and to protect the skin: their hair was the physical manifestation of a complex spiritual bond with the Empress. At her neck she wore the ebony Collar of Honor, a band of living metal that all of Her Children came to wear in t
heir youth, when they were ready to accept the Way. Every child wore at least five pendants of precious metal or gemstones that proclaimed their given name. As the child matured, more pendants were added to display her deeds and accomplishments in glorifying the Empress. Tesh-Dar wore more than any other of her kind save one, with rows of pendants flowing across the upper half of her chest. As with all the high priestesses of the warrior orders that served the Empress, she also wore a special symbol at the front of her collar: an oval of glittering metal in which had been carved the rune of the Desh-Ka, echoing the larger image that blazed from her breastplate.

  By comparison, the Empress was was typical in size for a Kreelan female. Her dress was as simple as Her spirit was complex: much like the healer caste, all She wore was a simple white robe with no adornments. Around Her neck, unlike the black collar worn by the others of Her race, was a simple gold colored band. It, too, was living metal, far more resilient than gold, and was the only surviving relic of the First Empress, their only physical link to Her. Passed from Empress to Empress upon each new Ascension, if there was anything that embodied the spirit of the Empire, it would be this simple object.

  The most striking feature of the Empress was that her hair, braided but not as long as Tesh-Dar’s, was pure white. It was not a random anomaly or an indicator of age: every Empress since the First Empress, Keel-Tath, had been born with white hair. It was part of their ancestral bloodline from those days of legend. Once every great cycle, roughly seven human years, a female warrior child was born with white hair and ebony talons. Not all would ascend to the throne, but the collar of the Empress could only be worn by a warrior who had those two traits. For the white hair proclaimed them as direct descendants of Keel-Tath, and the ebony talons signified that they were fertile.