In the meantime, using the just-repaired navigation controls, Sato brought the ship to a gentle stop. She had been drifting for the last hour, after the torpedo had detonated. Even with the main navigation systems off-line, he knew roughly where they were from basic spacial astrography using Saint Petersburg and its star as reference points. They weren’t too far from the planet in astronomical terms, but he wasn’t comfortable with navigating blind. Knowing where they were in the system was only half the problem: he needed to know where the task force was, not to mention the Saint Petersburg fleet. There was also the question of the flurry of red target icons that had appeared on the tactical display just as the torpedo exploded, but he was no longer sure if he had seen them or if he had been imagining things. None of the other members of the bridge crew remembered seeing them.
“Captain, this is Bogdanova.” Her tinny voice came from a small speaker in a crude metal box that had been insta-glued to the navigation console. Bodganova had brought it up with her from engineering before she updated Sato on the ship’s status. It was another analog contraption they had somehow cobbled together, a crude intercom system.
Sato pressed the switch on the jury-rigged device. “Sato here.”
“We’re ready, sir,” she said. He could tell from the sound of her voice that she must be dead — almost literally — on her feet. That only served to make him more desperate to get his people back to the fleet. He had already lost half a dozen people to extreme radiation poisoning, and he would lose many more if they didn’t get medical attention soon. “We don’t have a lot of options with this. We can pump in plenty of power, so range isn’t an issue, but it’ll be voice only and totally unencrypted, so friendly or enemy alike will be able to hear it. We can also only transmit on one frequency at a time, so I picked an old emergency navigation frequency that was standard on Earth and is still used on some other worlds.”
“It’ll work, Bogdanova,” he reassured her, praying that it really would. “Let’s do it.” He had already decided that if the Saint Petersburg fleet responded first, he would put his crew into lifeboats and then scuttle the ship. There was no point in offering battle: Yura would require weeks in the yards before she was combat-ready again.
“Okay, sir,” she said after a brief pause, “you’re live. Just push the button and speak into the intercom like you have been. Whatever you say will be broadcast. Just make sure you let up on the button or you won’t hear any reply.”
“Understood,” he told her, nausea and anticipation warring for supremacy in his stomach. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Mayday, mayday. This is Captain Ichiro Sato of the CNS Yura in the Saint Petersburg system, calling any Confederation vessel. We require immediate assistance. Please come in, over.”
He heard nothing at all until he remembered to let up on the transmit button. Feeling foolish, he released it and was rewarded with the hiss of static.
He waited a moment, then began his call again. “Mayday, mayday. This is Captain Ichiro Sato of the CNS Yura...”
* * *
“Bleed the humans and their ships wisely, my sisters,” Tesh-Dar counseled the senior shipmistresses of the fleet, most of whom had not been with her at the battle of Keran. “Remember: we come now to do battle over many cycles, not merely to win a swift victory. More ships come behind us, so you need not worry about being overwhelmed. Give the humans advantage where you so choose, that your combat may bring greater glory to the Empress. They are worthy opponents, and will challenge you and your warriors.” She looked around at the projected images of the shipmistresses, all of whom knelt on the command decks of their ships, heads bowed. “Go in Her name,” Tesh-Dar ordered. The shipmistresses saluted her, bringing their left hands up to crash against the armor of their right breasts before the images faded.
The fleet had been maneuvering against the larger of the two human forces, not quite letting them get into range as Tesh-Dar tested them, seeking to understand these new opponents. It seemed that humans had many clans, at least one per world, and perhaps even more, and this was reflected in the combat style of their ships and warriors. The group her fleet now faced used little finesse, but instead charged forward like a massive bludgeon. Their ships were powerfully armed, more so than the ships she had faced at Keran, and she would have to inform the builders to upgrade the next crop of ships they were growing. She was willing to confer tactical advantage to the humans, but would not allow her warriors to be needlessly slaughtered in obsolete vessels.
Still, the human who commanded this fleet was clumsy, as if she had never before wielded her — or his, she reminded herself, remembering that both female and male humans were sentient — fleet as a unified weapon. The human ships charged forward in a great mass, guns blazing, while her own ships, like a school of gigantic predatory fish, raked the enemy vessels with fire before darting gracefully away.
Turning her attention for a moment to the other, smaller group of human ships, she recognized some of their designs from the battle of Keran. It was incomprehensible to her that the two human groups would have been fighting one another in the face of the Empire’s invasion. On the other hand, she consoled herself, they were alien, with alien thoughts and beliefs. Understanding them was not her mission; it was likely she could never understand them, even if she tried. Finding the One whose blood would sing was why she was here, why they brought what would be many cycles of warfare to the humans. And if the One were not found, Tesh-Dar and her sisters would eventually exterminate the humans from the galaxy, just before the light of the Empire itself was extinguished.
“My priestess,” Li’ara-Zhurah spoke suddenly from behind her. “We are picking up a strange signal from one of the human ships, located away from the two main groups.”
Tesh-Dar turned in her chair just as a salvo from her command ship thundered, sending a broadside of heavy kinetic rounds toward their human opponents. The star field in the main display whirled as the shipmistress maneuvered the ship to clear some of the humans’ incoming fire. “What type of signal?” she asked, curious. The human communications systems were far more complex than anything the Kreelan ships of a similar technology level had ever used; the Bloodsong communicated far more information between Her Children than any human could ever imagine. Tesh-Dar’s ships used mainly voice and a primitive type of holographic display, normally transmitted — in the time when these ships were first designed, over a hundred thousand years ago — by basic electromagnetic waves.
“It is a radio signal,” Li’ara-Zhurah said, perplexed. “These ships on which we now sail commonly use such signals, but we have not seen such a basic emanation from a human ship before. It is a human voice that repeats the same message.”
Frowning, Tesh-Dar rose from her chair and came to stand beside Li’ara-Zhurah, who looked over the shoulder of the warrior who worked the communications console. “Play it for me,” the priestess ordered.
Over the speaker she could hear words spoken in a human language. She could not understand the words, but the lilt of the creature’s speech, the timbre of the voice, sounded familiar, and a sense of trepidation mixed with excitement suddenly flooded through her. “I recognize that voice,” she whispered. The signal was strong and clear, and while the human male who spoke clearly must be injured or exhausted, to judge from the sound of its voice, she nonetheless knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who it was. “It is the Messenger.”
Li’ara-Zhurah snapped her head around to stare at Tesh-Dar for a moment before she realized what she was doing and lowered her eyes in respect. “Fools, they are,” she hissed, “to risk him yet again!”
Tesh-Dar humphed. “Indeed, daughter,” she said. “Is it so surprising? They do not understand the Way.” In the Way of their people, from a tradition that was born in the mists of time long before the founding of the First Empire a hundred thousand years earlier, the Messenger was held sacred, sacrosanct in a way that few other things were among Her Children.
Closing her eyes, Tesh-Dar
reached out across space with her mind, her second sight taking in the human ships, then speeding beyond them. She could see the signal in her mind like gentle ocean waves. Following them to their source, she found the Messenger’s ship. Passing through the hull, she was distraught when she saw the condition of the crew. They were dying, all of them, from the radiation released by one of the nuclear weapons the larger human force had fired upon them before the Empress intervened. Many would live for a few weeks, at most, but all would die unless they were treated, and quickly.
She found him then, sitting at a console on his ship’s command deck. He looked so much older now than when she had last seen him, when she had returned him to his people, the sole survivor of his crew and the bearer of tidings of war. She could see and hear him speak into a small, ungainly box, his voice eventually reaching her ears here. She could not understand what he said, but she knew that, like any shipmistress, he would be trying to save his ship, his crew.
With a great sigh, her second sight faded and she opened her eyes to the reality around her. “He is dying,” she said with great sadness.
Li’ara-Zhurah, too, was deeply saddened. “Can we do nothing?” she whispered softly.
Tesh-Dar settled her gaze on Li’ara-Zhurah, her heart swelling with pride that her young successor would even consider, let alone say, such a thing. Truly, she had come far in her spiritual journey since the dark days her soul faced after Keran. “I shall give you a ship,” Tesh-Dar told her. “Healers are forbidden here, but you may take some of the healing gel we carry with us to care for him.” She was not worried about the potential harm to Li’ara-Zhurah or her unborn child from any residual radiation in the Messenger’s ship. The Children of the Empress were highly resistant to radiation poisoning, and any ill effects they suffered could be cured by the healers who remained in the support ships that waited well behind the assault fleet.
“Yes, my priestess,” Li’ara-Zhurah said, kneeling to the floor. Tesh-Dar had given her a very great honor. Command of a ship for as junior a warrior as she was honor enough. But to protect the Messenger was far, far beyond it.
Tesh-Dar put her hand on Li’ara-Zhurah’s shoulder. “Take care, my daughter,” she said. “You are not to risk yourself, even for him. For you are not only my chosen successor, but you are with child, and I forbid you to put yourself in danger.”
“I understand, Tesh-Dar,” the young warrior said, bowing her head deeper, her heart open to her priestess and the Empress, to her entire race, through the Bloodsong. “It shall be as you say.”
Tesh-Dar nodded, satisfied. “Go then, my child, in Her name.”
Li’ara-Zhurah saluted, then turned to leave the command deck, bound for a boat that would take her to her first command and the greatest honor of her young life.
* * *
“...Please come in, over.” Sato let up on the transmit button for the last time. He had been transmitting over and over for the last half hour with no response. Unable to help himself, he leaned forward, resting his head on the navigation console, exhausted. He had vomited twice since starting his radio vigil, but had kept at it until he simply couldn’t utter another word. The other bridge crewmen lay on the deck, resting from their exertions trying to get the bridge functional again.
Just a quick break, Sato told himself. A short rest. Then you have to start again. He was terrified that if he stopped for more than a few minutes, he wouldn’t have the strength to resume the mayday calls.
After taking in a few deep breaths and forcing himself to ignore the worsening nausea tearing at his insides, Sato looked up at the main bridge display.
“Captain,” came Bogdanova’s voice from the intercom. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing on the primary display?” She was obviously looking at one of the monitors in engineering that echoed the video feed on the bridge.
“Yes,” Sato said, the nausea in his gut quickly overtaken by an even more unpleasant sensation: the cold knife of fear. “I see it.” He stared stupidly at the intercom box. “Bogdanova, is there any way I can address the crew on this?”
“No sir,” she said apologetically. “It only works from the bridge to here, and to the radio transmitter. We haven’t had time to rig anything else yet.”
“It’s not a problem,” he reassured her. “You and the rest of the crew have done a great job.” He paused, looking again at the display, his hands clenching in frustration. As if things weren’t bad enough already, he thought. “We’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way,” he told her. “Pass the word among the crew: stand by to maneuver.”
“Stand by to maneuver, aye,” she echoed. “You have maneuvering control from the navigation console there, sir,” she reminded him.
“Understood,” Sato said, the adrenaline pumping into his system now helping to offset the effects of the radiation poisoning. For a time. “Avril,” he called as he began to move the Yura, “pass the word along from here to anyone who can hear you down the passageways: the ship is maneuvering.” Taking another look at the image on the main display, he added, “And have every crewman who can move get to their battle stations.”
Plainly visible now against the velvet black of space and the glowing disk of Saint Petersburg was the unmistakable silhouette of a Kreelan warship, sailing directly toward them.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Dammit,” Commodore Hanson breathed as she watched the Saint Petersburg fleet try to close with the Kreelans. Again. They were inflicting some damage, but the alien ships had an almost uncanny ability to dance out of the way of incoming fire, preventing the Russians from making a decisive engagement. This was totally unlike the Kreelan tactics — if that was the term — used during the battle of Keran, where they simply bored in, all guns blazing (much as the Russians were doing now, she noted). In comparison, this was death by a thousand paper cuts.
The political situation contributed to her frustration. She had already tried twice to assist the Russian fleet, but each time they had fired on her task force as soon as they had come into range. While she was sorely tempted to fire back, to earn some payback for the loss of Myoko and Yura, if nothing else, she restrained the urge. The lives of millions of people were at stake: she had to find a way to make the Saint Petersburg government cooperate. She had tried to convince them peacefully through reason when she had spoken with Chairman Korolev. Now, using the Marines on the planet who had survived the devastating ambush Grishin had reported from Yura’s cutter, she was trying something that the Russians were perhaps better prepared to understand.
* * *
“This is nuts,” Faraday muttered as he guided his cutter at treetop height through the middle of Saint Petersburg City. The threat display was showing a dozen crimson icons, ground defenses and inbound fighters, that were trying to find them. The only thing saving them thus far was that they were literally lost in the clutter of the buildings of downtown. Navigating through the tight turns necessary to follow the streets, while keeping them alive, also had him in a cold sweat. “If we had an extra coat of paint, colonel, we’d be scraping the sides off these buildings.”
“You are doing just fine,” Grishin told him calmly, standing in the aisle, leaning against the bulkhead at the rear of the flight deck, seemingly impervious to the sharp turns the cutter was making. “It is not much further.”
The threat display chirped for attention. “Standby point defense,” the copilot said tensely. A pair of fighters had found them. “Firing!”
The hull was suddenly filled with a deep ripping sound as the point defense lasers fired. The two icons of the inbound fighters suddenly disappeared.
“Targets destroyed,” the copilot reported. “We can hold them off as long as they send in their fighters a few at a time and we don’t get too close to any ground defenses, but sooner or later somebody’s going to figure that out and they’ll swarm us.”
“We will be finished long before that happens,” Grishin assured him.
Faraday glanced at the
colonel, turning over in his mind the very different possible meanings of what Grishin had said. He grimaced as he turned his attention back to flying.
In the rear, the Marines were strapped in but anxious to get off of the wildly maneuvering ship. Near the front, next to Grishin, sat Valentina, with Sikorsky and Ludmilla across from her. Both of them were wide-eyed with fear. Valentina had asked them to stay with the larger force of Marines that was now rushing into the city from the base where they had been ambushed, using trucks and armored vehicles they had liberated from the Russian garrison. The two had refused, however, both declaring in no uncertain terms that they felt their best chance of survival was with Valentina.
Looking at the two of them, Valentina felt a deep pang of regret. Despite the tragedies that had rocked their lives, Sikorsky and Ludmilla were still deeply in love. They held on tightly to one another, most of the time with their eyes closed. But when they were open, they were looking at Valentina. And every time they did, a little more of their fear seemed to fall away. She felt unworthy of their trust and confidence, and prayed that she wouldn’t fail them.
As if reading her mind, Sikorsky reached across the aisle and took her hands in one of his. Squeezing them tightly, he gave her a brave smile.
Valentina did her best to smile back, but her expression faltered. She was surprised: lying and deceit were second nature to her as part of her profession, but for some reason she was unable to put on one of her many masks for Sikorsky. What he saw now was the unvarnished truth of her, a face that she had shown to precious few people, a face that now betrayed uncertainty.
Standing in the aisle ahead of them, Grishin stared out the cutter’s massive windscreen, watching as the ship finally broke free of the last ring of buildings and the city center appeared. Here was the government complex, a poor copy of the old Kremlin in Moscow back on Earth, only uglier, Grishin thought. The original Kremlin and the city in which it had stood had been destroyed in the wars before the Diaspora, but its oppressive architectural ideals, particularly from the time of Josef Stalin, had somehow been preserved. Growing up here, Grishin had loved the monolithic majesty of the massive skyscrapers surrounding the center of government. As a young man, he had happily, almost deliriously, embraced the tenets of the Party and joined the Red Army. His happy delirium had lasted for a brief five years before being transformed into barely suppressed horror at what he had been called upon to do during the war with Earth and the Alliance. Yet he had done his duty, and suffered the consequences in the war’s aftermath. One of many accused — with just reason, he thought guiltily — of war crimes, he had managed to escape off-planet, eventually starting a new life in the Alliance Foreign Legion.
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