In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  He cringed at the sounds coming from the front room: the growls, grunts, and screams of a pitched battle at close quarters. There had been gunfire in the first few seconds, but then only a few sporadic shots after that. He remembered the sounds of combat during the war years ago, and this was little different. Ludmilla whimpered as the wall to the front room shook violently with the impact of a body hurled against it, the wet smacking sound punctuated with the dry snapping of bone. She huddled close to him, shivering in fear.

  He heard a noise that he did not recognize, a drone that quickly became a roar just outside the building. The little device Valentina had given him now glowed a solid green.

  “Help is here, dorogaya,” he shouted to Ludmilla over the roar, just as the ferocity of the fighting in the front room suddenly peaked in a flurry of what could only be savage blows and crashes as the combatants flung themselves about the front room in a final killing orgy.

  After one last crash, there was only the roar of the engines outside. Sikorsky tightened his grip on the submachine pistol, his finger easing in more pressure on the trigger, preparing to fire.

  “Dmitri!” a woman’s voice — Valentina’s voice — called wearily from the front room. “It’s clear! Come on, we have to go!”

  “Slava Bogu,” Sikorsky whispered. Thank God. “We are coming!” He gathered up Ludmilla in his arms and helped her into the front room. He was totally unprepared for the sight that greeted him.

  The apartment looked as if it had been struck by a bomb. Every piece of furniture was overturned, with the dining chairs reduced to splinters. The bookshelves had been smashed and their contents, most of it Party propaganda and novels by sanctioned authors, spread like confetti across the floor. The kitchen was a disaster, with shattered dishes and glassware everywhere. There were holes punched through the thin drywall by fists and feet, with blood streaked and spattered haphazardly across the walls and floor. He gaped at one of the secret police, whose head had been rammed completely through one of the walls, a spear-tipped leg from one of the demolished dining chairs stabbed through his back. The bodies of half a dozen more secret police were scattered throughout the wreck of their small home, their bodies bloody and broken.

  In the middle of it all stood Valentina. She had a deep gash across her right cheek and a bloody welt across her left arm where a bullet had grazed her, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. Sikorsky shook his head in wonderment: she wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “Let’s go,” she told them, helping him guide Ludmilla through the mess and around the bodies. She paused only long enough to snatch up one of the submachine pistols, slinging it quickly across her shoulder. “Downstairs.”

  As they moved down the hall toward the elevator, they heard the sound of heavy footsteps hammering up the stairwell.

  “Get behind me,” she said grimly as she pointed her weapon toward the stairwell door.

  The footfalls suddenly ceased, and the door creaked open slightly. “Confederation Marines!” someone called in a voice with an unmistakable British accent. “I was told to ask if you might be Scarlet,” the voice said.

  “That’s me,” she said in Standard, smiling tiredly at the camouflaged face that carefully peered through the door. “We could use a bit of help here. I’ve got two civilians with me. Friendlies.”

  With that, a massive man in Marine combat armor, holding an equally massive pistol that he pointed safely toward the ceiling, burst through the door. He held it open as more Marines charged through. Two of them slung their weapons and began to help Ludmilla and Sikorsky, with the rest forming a protective cordon around them and Scarlet.

  Up and down the hallway, a few doors cracked open and wide, disbelieving eyes peered out before the doors slammed shut.

  “First Sergeant Roland Mills, at your service, miss,” the big Marine said, quickly shaking her hand. “Let’s get on the road, shall we?”

  The young woman offered no objections as the Marines bundled her and the two bewildered civilians down the stairway. Behind them, Mills and Sabourin paused, peering through the door to the apartment.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Mills said, impressed with the devastation.

  “Do not piss her off,” Sabourin advised with a wry grin as she turned and double-timed after her squad.

  “No worries about that,” Mills muttered as he quickly followed after her.

  They had just pushed through the front doors of the apartment building when a volley of small arms fire cracked down the length of the street toward the cutter, clearly audible through the roar of the ship’s hover engines.

  “Return fire!” Mills shouted. “But watch for the civilians!” The last thing he wanted on his hands was a bloodbath of innocent people who got caught in the crossfire.

  The Marines immediately unleashed a barrage of accurate rifle fire that quickly silenced their attackers, who turned out to be a pair of militiamen who normally directed traffic, but who were armed with pistols and unwisely decided to try and defend their motherland with them.

  The Marines got Sikorsky and his wife aboard, and covered Scarlet as she darted up the rear ramp.

  “Time to go, Marines,” Mills said on the platoon common channel. Instantly, the three squads reversed their deployment order to board the cutter, with the only difference being that they all piled in through the rear ramp. Faraday already had the cutter gliding forward before the hatch hummed closed.

  “Well,” Mills said to no one in particular, “that was unexpectedly easy.”

  “Glad you think so, Top,” Faraday told him grimly, “because we’ve got new orders, straight from the commodore.”

  “Okay, let’s have it,” Mills said, wanting to kick himself for his comment about the mission having been easy. Jinxed yourself, you wanker.

  “The fleet’s lost contact with Colonel Grishin’s force,” Faraday told him. “They want us to do a recon to see if we can regain contact. I’ve got the coordinates, and that’s where we’re heading now for our first stop.”

  “Our first stop?” Mills asked, wondering what would top that.

  “Yeah, you’ll love this,” Faraday said as the cutter accelerated hard, shooting down the street as it gained just enough altitude to skim the tops of the buildings. “The Kreelans have just joined the party upstairs—” Mills and Sabourin exchanged a look, “—and the commodore and some civilian guy on the Constellation thought it might be a good idea to send us to go talk some sense into the not-so-saintly leadership of this garden planet about working together against the Kreelans.”

  “The commodore’s off her bloody nut!” Mills exclaimed. “What the devil are we supposed to do? Go to their government buildings and hold the chairman and his minions hostage?”

  Faraday took a precious moment to turn around and look at him. “How’d you guess?”

  From the expression on the pilot’s face, Mills knew he wasn’t joking. “What a bloody cockup,” he moaned as he slid into an open combat seat, strapping himself in as the cutter bucked and jolted through the air, headed toward where Colonel Grishin’s Marines had disappeared.

  * * *

  At that moment, Grishin was still trying to find a way out of the trap in which he and his Marines were caught. The irony of the boats all having been destroyed was that the wreckage had provided his people some cover from the Russian soldiers on the wall, but there was no way to escape from the massive killing field. Some of his people had taken a run at the main gate that had been blown open by one of the boat pilots, but the Russians had cut them all down. Assaulting the wall itself was out of the question, because they had nothing to scale it with to reach the enemy soldiers along the top. The Marines had at least been able to take out the heavy guns in the towers, using some of their anti-armor weapons to blow the towers to bits. Even with the losses his Marines had inflicted, however, the Russians still enjoyed massive superiority in firepower.

  Worse, he knew from imagery the Marine force had received prior to landing that the
re were armored units garrisoned not far from here. If the Russians sent in tanks, the Marines’ only real hope was to knock them out right as they entered through the main gate, blocking the path for other armored vehicles. If even one or two tanks got inside the wall, this battle could be over very quickly.

  There was an explosion along the wall near one of the entrances to the underground barracks from where fresh Russian soldiers had been appearing. It was followed by a fierce roar from many voices, punctuated by a massive flurry of firing that, from the distinctive sound, could only be coming from Marine rifles.

  Unwilling to believe he could be that lucky, Grishin risked raising up enough to train his field glasses on that part of the wall. “Merde!” he exclaimed. “It’s the other battalion!”

  The battalion of Marines he had originally sent into the massive bunker complex, and that had been trapped when the Russians had closed the massive door and sealed them in, had obviously not given up. Somehow, they had made their way through whatever maze lay in the mountain to find the underground barracks area, and from there had fought their way to the wall surrounding the compound. From what Grishin could see, it was clear that the Russians on the wall had been taken completely by surprise. Charging across the top of the wall, the Marines poured fire into the enemy soldiers. Those Russians who managed to survive the rifle fire were brought down in vicious hand to hand combat.

  “Concentrate fire on the center and left flank!” Grishin ordered to his operations officer. The Marines on the wall were to his relative right, and would be vulnerable to fire coming from Russians on other parts of the wall. “We must keep the enemy pinned down so they cannot—”

  Grishin’s explanation was drowned out by a flight of four Russian aerospace fighters that thundered in low. He watched as the bomb bay doors slid open, the smooth curves of the weapons clearly visible.

  It is over, he thought, certain that the weapons were the modern equivalent of the napalm that had once been a popular air to ground weapon on Earth. The walls and the concrete apron would contain the heat, effectively incinerating his entire force.

  As the slow-motion movie in his mind continued rolling, he saw streaks of tracer fire from Marine rifles pass by the fighters, and even an anti-armor missile that some industrious Marine had fired. He smiled, proud that his men and women were still fighting, then closed his eyes. He had seen enough death in his time, and had seen the effects of these weapons during the war twenty years ago. He did not want to see them again.

  The weapons never fell. Grishin snapped his eyes open again as four explosions shook the ground. Where the four fighters should have been were fireballs that burned through the air to slam into the far wall of the facility, instantly incinerating the Russian soldiers along the top.

  That miracle was followed by the appearance of a Confederation warship’s cutter, which proceeded to blast the remaining Russian soldiers from the wall. The Russians tried to shoot it down with their hypervelocity missiles, but unlike the assault boats, the cutter carried point defense weapons that were more than adequate to defend it against the non-maneuvering missiles. The ship swept along the wall at low altitude, firing at everything that moved or fired back. Then the cutter’s pilot swung the ship outside the wall near the massive entry gate and attacked whatever Saint Petersburg forces were there.

  Finally, satisfied that the area was secure for the moment, the pilot brought the ship in to land in the center of the apron, picking a spot that was relatively clear of debris from the hapless assault boats. The rear ramp dropped down and a platoon of Marines charged out, led by someone he instantly recognized.

  “First Sergeant Mills,” Grishin said as the big Brit rushed over, “I am very, very happy to see you!”

  “Likewise, sir!” Mills replied with a smile. “Bit of tight spot you were in, sir, it looks like.”

  “How soon until we can get enough transports to get us back to the fleet?” Grishin asked as he watched Mills’s people moving quickly across the apron, gathering up the wounded and moving them to a makeshift aid station close to the cutter where the surviving corpsmen could treat them.

  “That’s a bit of a problem, sir,” Mills said, his smile quickly fading. “We’ve got orders from the commodore, but they don’t include leaving. In fact, she told me that if we found you alive, you’re to come with us on our next little joyride.”

  “And just what might that be?” Grishin asked, sure from Mills’s expression that he didn’t want to know.

  Mills said, “Would you believe we’re going to go pay a visit to Chairman Korolev, to see if he would kindly help us with a pesky little Kreelan fleet that’s popped into the system?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “Status,” Sato breathed, trying to control the nausea that gripped him. Radiation poisoning. Every crew member carried a dosimeter, a device that tracked any exposure to radiation. Normally green, his and those of the other bridge crewmen had turned an ominous amber tinged with red. The situation with much of the rest of the crew was far worse. The bridge was located toward the center of the vessel’s hull to help protect it against enemy fire. There were many compartments and systems, however, that were closer to the ship’s skin, and far more exposed to the blast of radiation from the nuclear torpedo. While the ship was designed to protect its crew and systems from the radiation typically found in space travel, Yura’s design specifications had not included providing protection against the torrent of ionizing radiation from nuclear weapons. When the torpedo they had been chasing detonated, the electromagnetic pulse had fried half of the ship’s electronic systems, while the radiation had devastated the crew. Sickbay could administer a full scope of treatment for radiation poisoning, but the supplies were limited: they were primarily intended to help crewmen in the engine room should there be an accidental radiation leak from the ship’s propulsion systems. There was enough medication to treat a dozen cases of moderate radiation poisoning, but Sato was faced with nearly three hundred, many of them severe.

  “We’ve got auxiliary navigation control back on-line, captain,” Bogdanova reported weakly. She had already vomited several times and could barely stand without bracing herself against something. Besides Sato, she was in the best shape of those still functioning on the bridge. Most of the ship’s crew was worse, totally unable to function, and Sato had ordered the worst ones taken to their quarters. There was no point in taking them to sick bay: half the crew was already there, vomiting and physically too weak to function. “We’ve patched enough of life support back together to keep us alive for at least the next forty-eight hours, maybe longer.”

  “Communications?” he asked.

  She shook her head. The movement threw her off balance and she almost fell to the deck. Sato grabbed her arm and held her up. The movement left him weak, his head spinning.

  “No luck, sir,” she said. “Every component we’ve swapped in has been burned out. We’ve tried everything, even the Marine radios, but nothing works.” She took a labored breath before continuing. “I’ve got some people in engineering trying to put together a radio that doesn’t use solid state electronics. It’s all basic theory, it’ll work, allowing us to transmit and receive, but I don’t know if anyone will pick it up. Scanning the electromagnetic spectrum for analog radio signals is something survey crews do as part of their survey missions, searching for atomic-era civilizations. Fleet communications officers don’t normally look for that sort of thing.” Exhausted, she suddenly sat down on the deck, leaning back against one of the bridge support pylons.

  Kneeling down beside her, Sato patted her gently on the shoulder and said, “Good work, Bogdanova. You keep this up and you’ll have your own command pretty soon.” He managed a tired smile, which she wanly returned. “Come on,” he told her, forcing himself back to his feet. “We’ve got to get that radio working.” Gripping her hands in his, he pulled her upright. She fell against him momentarily, as if they were in a romantic embrace, but Sato could think of few things l
ess romantic than acute radiation poisoning. “Get back with those engineers and get that radio put together. It’s the only thing that might save us.”

  “Yes, sir,” she whispered. Then, gathering up her strength, she stood tall and made her way unsteadily off the bridge, heading for engineering.

  Sato collapsed into the combat chair at the navigation console. The other four members of the bridge crew who were still functional glanced up at him to make sure he was all right. “Carry on,” he told them, and they turned back to their tasks, swapping out electrical components or jury-rigging analog equivalents to get more of the ship’s systems back on-line. “Any luck with the sensors, Avril?” he asked one of the men who was half-buried in an access panel.

  “Just a minute, sir, I think I’ve almost got it...” he rasped. Then, “There! Give that a try, skipper.”

  Sato activated the controls on the navigation console, and was immediately relieved when the main bridge display lit up.

  “We don’t have anything but visual right now, sir,” Avril told him. “We were able to replace some of the external cameras and get some video feeds going. But the main sensor arrays...” He shook his head. “Going to need some time in dry dock for those. Every relay, amp, and signal processor between the main arrays and the computer core is fried.”

  “It will do, Mr. Avril,” Sato told him. “It will do quite nicely. Damn fine work.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Avril said with a tight smile, one arm clamping around his stomach. “Jesus, captain,” he said through clenched teeth at the nausea that tore at his gut, “make sure the galley doesn’t serve any more of those damned burritos, will you?”

  Despite his own increasing discomfort, the nausea and a pounding headache, the weakness he felt, Sato couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’ll do that, Mr. Avril,” he promised. “I promise.”