In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  “What if they try to jump out when your trap is sprung?” one of the other ministers asked.

  Antonov shook his head. “If what we know about their naval procedures is true, they will not have time. I believe they will try to engage the force of warships we will soon send to greet them. When they do, they will be within range of the special,” he glanced sourly at Morozov, “torpedoes. These weapons are very fast, far faster than the Confederation designs: their ships will not have time to cycle their jump engines before they are destroyed.”

  Korolev nodded, satisfied. Then he turned to Morozov. “And were you, comrade, successful in your part of this grand scheme?”

  “Quite, comrade chairman,” he said with a carefully controlled expression. He had no doubts that Antonov already knew of the disaster at Morozov’s own headquarters, but the defense minister apparently was holding back that bit of news from the chairman to use at a future time when it would prove particularly detrimental. In the end, however, it would do Antonov little good: the goal had been for the two Confederation spies to escape and not be suspicious that their getaway had, in fact, been planned. Morozov had intended for them to be followed so they could be quickly rounded up after they had done whatever they needed to do to contact the Confederation, but that part had not come to fruition. Obviously, he thought, cursing the dead colonel who had let things get so out of hand. The fool’s family was already on their way to a labor camp in the far south, where they would spend the rest of their miserable lives. “The spies are away, just as we planned,” he said in a half-truth. “If what we suspect is true, you should see the result soon enough from the actions of the Confederation ships.”

  They did not have long to wait.

  * * *

  When she had finished dictating the stream of numbers, Valentina quickly set the device down on the ground and grabbed Sikorsky with one hand, holding the cylinder in the other. “Come with me,” she said as she quickly walked away. “You don’t want to be near it when it transmits.”

  “Why?” Sikorsky asked, stumbling after her as she quickly pulled him along. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the small device, wondering what could be so—

  The forest behind him where she had placed the device suddenly lit up, blindingly bright. He shut his eyes and turned away, only to be knocked to his knees by a powerful blast.

  “Does everything you brought with you explode?” he demanded as she pulled him back to his feet.

  “The ship that dropped me off left some microsats in high orbit to relay any messages to the fleet,” she said as she led him back to their stolen vehicle. “With a device as small as that transmitter, the only way to generate the power for a strong enough signal is to create a small explosion and a pulse wave.” She looked at him. “Does that make sense?”

  “I understand the concept,” he grumbled, “but what if you have to tell them something else? You no longer have a way to communicate.”

  “I have a shorter-range transmitter,” she said, showing him the watch she had taken from the cylinder and strapped to her wrist. “It won’t reach the fleet, but when my extraction team comes...”

  She stopped as they reached the vehicle, and she turned to Sikorsky. “Dmitri,” she told him, “you can come back with me. The Confederation will grant you asylum, give you a new life.”

  He said nothing for a long moment as he stared out at the forest around them. “I cannot leave, Valentina,” he said quietly. They had gone over this earlier, but it would have been a lie to say that he had not been thinking about it. The final answer, however, had not changed. “I am disgusted by what our leaders have done to our people, to my family. I helped you in hopes that, in some small way, it might change things for us, make things better, even if not for me.” He turned to look at her. “I could not live with myself if I simply walked away. That would make me feel like a traitor, and that is something I am not. And what sort of life would I have somewhere else? I know our world is not listed in many tourist guides of the human sphere, Valentina, but this is where I was born and where I have lived my life. It is my home.”

  “They’ll kill you, Dmitri,” she said quietly. “And what about your wife? I doubt she’s going to be happy about all this.”

  “What about her, indeed,” he sighed.

  * * *

  Commodore Hanson was in her command chair on the Constellation’s flag bridge, which was a special compartment adjoining the ship’s bridge from where her staff could control the actions of the task force.

  The door behind her suddenly swished open, and a tall, well-muscled man in civilian clothes stepped quickly to her side. She knew little about him other than his name, Robert Torvald (which she suspected was a pseudonym), and that he was the controller for the Confederation agent whose mission was to get Hanson the information she needed to snatch Saint Petersburg’s nuclear weapons. He had arrived in a special courier at the task force’s rendezvous point, coming aboard Constellation at the last minute, when it had become clear that the rest of the task force and the designated mission commander, a two-star admiral, would not be making the party. Hanson had initially been irked at the man’s presence, for he was the only one authorized to make contact with the source, the Navy apparently not being sufficiently trustworthy. He had brought along special communications gear that had been locked away in a small arms locker under the control of two Marine guards. That’s where he had been since two hours before the task force’s emergence here, crammed into the tiny room with his mysterious equipment.

  “Here it is,” he told her quietly, handing her a data chip. “I’ve sanitized the information to a classification level that will allow you to use it in any of the ship’s systems.”

  “And what did you leave out?” she asked sharply.

  “Nothing that will affect your mission, commodore,” he answered softly, returning her gaze levelly.

  She held the tiny chip in her hand, looking at it for just a moment, wondering at the guts of whomever had obtained the data. And how accurate the information was. The lives of her crewmen and the Marines now depended on it. With a scowl, she called over her flag operations officer. “Here,” she said, handing him the chip. “This is the data on the nuclear weapons. Get this analyzed and update our operations plans, pronto.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” he said, taking the chip and hurrying back to his station.

  “Commodore,” the flag communications officer said, “we’ve got an incoming message from planetside.”

  Hanson frowned. She had wanted to take the initiative in making contact with the Saint Petersburg government or military, but she had been forced to wait until she had the information on the nuclear weapons. “Put it on the main screen,” she ordered tersely, wondering who she would be dealing with.

  * * *

  “This is Commodore Margaret Hanson of the Confederation Navy,” the woman on the screen said formally. “To whom am I speaking?”

  “Commodore, this is Iosef Korolev, Chairman of the Ruling Party Council of Saint Petersburg,” he said amicably. “May I ask why the newly formed Confederation has sent a fleet of warships to our peaceful system?”

  “Mr. Chairman,” the woman said evenly, “I was sent here on the orders of the President of the Confederation to carry out an inspection of several facilities on Saint Petersburg. This inspection is in accordance with article fourteen of the long-term armistice provisions, citing that Saint Petersburg may not develop, construct, or possess weapons of mass destruction. My secondary orders,” she went on, “are to conduct a training exercise with the Rigan coast guard and provide supplies and personnel to assist them in forming Territorial Army detachments for common defense. This is required and was agreed to, as stated in the Confederation Constitution, when Riga became a member.”

  Korolev relaxed back into his chair. “Well, commodore,” he said, his Russian accent barely evident in his New Oxford-educated English, “welcome to Saint Petersburg. If you would please have your staff coord
inate with our naval personnel, we will be happy to arrange for your inspection parties to land.

  “As for your proposed exercise with the Rigan coast guard, however,” he went on, wincing slightly, as if the idea gave him indigestion, “I believe your government misunderstands the situation. Riga is a semi-autonomous world under our governance. Any claim they may have made to independent status or membership in your interplanetary government is neither legitimate, nor legal. Their defense is well in hand, I assure you, without any involvement by Confederation forces. Please, commodore, I strongly urge you to seek further counsel from your government — preferably with clarification from an envoy I would be happy to send with you — before carrying out those orders. Your ships are welcome in orbit around Saint Petersburg, but we will consider any deployment of your vessels further in-system toward Riga to be an...unfriendly provocation.” He smiled, conveying just the right mixture of warmth and menace.

  Hanson paused a moment. “Mr. Chairman, I suggest we consider the two issues separately for now,” she finally said. “I’ll maintain my task force in orbit around Saint Petersburg while we conduct our inspections. Once that is taken care of, we can further discuss the situation with Riga.”

  “There is not really any more to discuss on that point,” Korolev told her, “but for as long as your ships stay in orbit here, we have no quarrel. If there is nothing else, commodore, my naval personnel will contact you with the necessary information to coordinate your inspections.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Hanson said. “You’re most gracious.”

  Korolev nodded, then killed the connection.

  “Fools,” Marshal Antonov said, aghast. “They cannot believe that we would just let them walk into our facilities. The armistice conditions expired years ago!”

  “Not entirely true, marshal,” Morozov said. “Technically, the provisions of article fourteen, and article fourteen alone, were to remain in effect in perpetuity: the good commodore does indeed have legal right to inspect our facilities if they have reasonable suspicion that weapons of mass destruction are present or being produced. No doubt she will land her troops and then stay in close orbit to protect them. Of course, this is exactly what we wanted.” He smiled. “So, you see, even though it caused us much pain at the end of the war, today the armistice will serve our purposes nicely, and will allow us to firmly put the Confederation in its place.”

  Almost grudgingly, Antonov returned Morozov’s smile.

  * * *

  “Do not be deceived, commodore,” Grishin said with uncharacteristic vehemence, “This is a trap.”

  Commodore Hanson had called a final commander’s meeting over the inter-ship vidcom immediately after she got off the link with Korolev. All of the ship captains were virtually present, their images displayed on the main viewscreen in her ready room. Around the table with her sat her flag staff and the Constellation’s captain. As the senior Marine commander, Grishin also participated, the vidcom projecting his image from the cramped cockpit of his assault boat. It was ready to be launched with the rest of the boats carrying the Marines from the two assault carriers, as soon as the commodore gave the word.

  “Colonel,” Hanson’s intelligence officer said in a neutral voice, “we’re not seeing any indications of a hostile reaction. We’ve identified every ship in the system as either some sort of transport or a coast guard vessel. There’s not a single sign of any warships. We’ve also not detected any unusual emissions — search or targeting systems — from the planet.” He turned to Hanson. “Ma’am, I’m not saying that Korolev may not have a surprise in store for us, but if he is, he’s concealing it bloody well.”

  Grishin shook his head. “Maskirovka — deception — is a specialty of theirs. If you review the history of the conflict twenty years ago, you will clearly see this: the Terran and Alliance forces suffered several major defeats and the loss of many troops because of it.”

  “Colonel,” Hanson said, “even if it is a trap, there’s very little I can do other than spring it while keeping our eyes wide open. We have confirmation that they have nuclear weapons, and we have details on where they’re produced and stored. Our orders are clear on what we have to do next: get down there as quickly as possible to seize them before they can be moved.” As she spoke, the task force was taking up position in a series of polar orbits. This would allow Hanson to have at least a few ships passing over the primary target area at any given time in low orbit to provide support to the Marines, while allowing her to also keep an eye on the rest of the planet. “If I knew what their deception was, we could try to disrupt it. Unfortunately, we don’t, so we’ve got to go with what we’ve got.” She paused, looking each of her commanders in the eye. “Let’s do it, people.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “You don’t have to do this, Valentina,” Sikorsky said for the third time as she drove him back into Saint Petersburg City. After she had sent the signal to the fleet, he had wanted to return home, to try and get his wife out of the city before the Confederation Marines came. Before the next war started.

  “If you say that one more time, Dmitri,” she told him with a wry smile, “I’m going to break your arm. I’m coming with you. So get used to the idea and stop worrying about it.”

  Sikorsky nodded, an unhappy expression on his face. As he turned to look out the window, however, she saw in the side mirror a small smile form on his lips.

  What she was doing was explicitly against her orders. She was supposed to sever any ties with the locals and wait in a secure location for pickup. It was something she had done before, many times. One of those times, she had even been forced to kill her contact, a woman she had worked closely with and befriended over a three month-long mission that had gone bad, literally, at the last minute. Valentina had been known as Consuela then, just one of the many false identities behind which Scarlet had concealed herself. Outwardly, her contact’s death did not appear to affect her; she told her controller that it was simply part of the mission, and that the woman had been an asset or, as Dmitri had said, a tool to be used and discarded as necessary.

  But she had become so adept at the art of deception that she had deceived herself. It took her several months to realize that part of her soul had died the day that she had turned to this woman, her contact and friend, and wordlessly snapped her neck before she could be captured and interrogated. The two of them had been cornered, trapped, and the woman had simply known too much to fall into the wrong hands. There had been no way for both of them to escape, and so Consuela — Scarlet — had killed her friend. She managed to escape after a vicious fight with her pursuers, but the emotional wound was deep, and had never truly healed. There had been other missions since then, but she had never allowed herself to become close to any of the contacts she had made. Nor to anyone else.

  Until Dmitri. He was an anomaly in her experience. There was nothing outwardly special about him. While he certainly was not a homely man, she was not physically or emotionally attracted to him. He didn’t play the role of a hero, although he clearly had courage. He wasn’t rich or powerful. Had she called him a simple and ordinary man, with simple and ordinary ways, he would no doubt have heartily agreed and poured the two of them some vodka to drink together.

  No. Her bond to Dmitri, the sense of loyalty she felt to this human tool, who would be used and discarded as necessary for her mission, was simply because he was a good man, with a good heart. There were few enough of those in the universe, she knew from painful experience, and she had decided that if she could help him, she would. It wouldn’t be a full atonement for her past sins, but it was a start.

  Now that her primary mission objective had been met and the target information conveyed to the fleet (she hoped, for there was no way for her to know if the fleet had actually received it, or if the Navy had even arrived), the only harm that could come from her helping Dmitri was to herself. She realized that she was an asset to the Confederation in the same way that Dmitri was to her, but the
difference was that the Confederation was not here to enforce the rules. What she did now was up to her, and she had chosen to help him.

  On the way back to the city, they had stopped at the small town where Valentina had boarded the train to Saint Petersburg only a week earlier. It was risky, but she needed some civilian clothes to do what they had planned. Assuming the arrogant attitude typical of the secret police, she had marched into the shabby local clothing store and bought what she needed using the credit disk of the soldier whose uniform she wore. That caused the clerk to raise her eyebrows, but looking up into Valentina’s cold eyes was enough to avert any questions. Valentina knew that there was a chance the woman would report her, but Sikorsky dismissed the notion.

  “No one will question you,” he said. “You wear a secret police uniform, are driving one of their vehicles, and have a comrade with you, all in plain sight. It does not matter if the name on the credit disk does not match. People do not delve into the affairs of the secret police, because they do not want them knocking on doors, asking questions, and taking people away, never to return. If you look like secret police, to them you are secret police.”

  They had made a second stop, this time at a small deli that was completely empty except for the elderly man behind the counter. Sikorsky bought some questionable looking cold cuts and bread, which actually looked good and smelled delicious, and two bottles of mineral water. In the meantime, Valentina disappeared into the disgustingly dirty rest room to change. She put on her civilian clothes, a pair of black pants and a dark brown blouse that were both shapeless and common, and then put her baggy uniform back on over top. She had also bought a set of sandals that were typical summer casual wear for women here, which she left in the vehicle. So, for all the proprietor of the deli knew, she had simply gone to the bathroom while her comrade had procured lunch.