Her first magazine empty, she quickly changed it, keeping her eyes glued to the cutter. She watched in amazement as several small objects arced over the top of the cutter from the far side where the Marines were dashing aboard: grenades they had blindly tossed over the ship into the attacking Russians. They exploded almost simultaneously, wiping away most of the lead rank of attackers, but there were more behind them. Many more.
“Reloading!” Dmitri cried as he popped out his weapon’s empty magazine and slammed another home.
Valentina did the same, ramming the massive magazine for her weapon into its slot and pulling the charging handle to chamber a round. There was a brief hissing sound as a tiny amount of liquid propellant was vaporized in the weapon’s breech, and a tiny green ready light glowed.
“Firing!” she announced again, beginning a rapid series of shots that echoed among the government buildings like God’s own thunder. Attacking soldiers were blown apart one after another. Just as the first Russians got close enough to the cutter that Valentina dared not fire on them, the attack faltered, her continued hammer blows having literally gutted their advance.
At last, after what had seemed a lifetime but was really less than a minute, the cutter lifted off, the pilot shearing the top from an old oak tree that stood near the Central Chamber building. Free now of the intervening obstacles that had kept them largely silent while the ship was on the ground, the cutter’s point defense lasers tore through the Russian troops who now stood in the middle of the square, firing up at the ship’s belly as it passed overhead.
“Valentina!” Sikorsky shouted desperately. “Missile launcher, behind the main fountain!”
Cursing under her breath, Valentina lowered her muzzle, searching for the target Dmitri had called out. She only saw troops standing, blazing away at the cutter. She didn’t see any missile...there! The two soldiers were blocked by several others; she could only see the tip of the missile in its launcher tube, slowly tracking the cutter. As if in slow motion, she saw a plume of white smoke from the ejection charge puff to the rear, boosting the missile out of the launch tube just as she pulled the trigger.
“No!” Sikorsky cried as the missile’s motor ignited and it raced through the air like lightning toward the cutter.
Valentina had lost sight of the launcher when she fired, her weapon’s recoil knocking her back. She lowered the big rifle to stare at the scene: she could see that the launch crew was dead, along with the soldiers in front of them, but she realized that she had been just a fraction of a second too late. “Nam konets,” she said, her heart in her throat. “We’re fucked.”
The missile streaked toward the cutter, blowing off one of its horizontal stabilizers in a cascade of sparks and flying metal shards.
In that instant, Valentina realized that her last round had made a difference: the missile’s aim must have been knocked off by just a hair when her shot vaporized the man’s torso.
The ship wobbled, but remained steady as it headed directly for them. She knew it would not be spaceworthy, but would get them at least as far as the spaceport. Probably.
“Dmitri!” Ludmilla suddenly cried as a hollow boom echoed from the stairwell behind them: someone had set off Valentina’s booby-trap.
“Get behind me!” Valentina cried as she got to her feet. Moving away from the courtyard side of the wall, which was now being hit by a hail of gunfire as the angry Russian mob below fired at the approaching cutter, she knelt next to one of the pillars supporting the huge clock above them, aiming the big rifle at the door. Ludmilla crouched on the other side of the pillar, with Sikorsky standing next to Valentina. “You get her on the boat!” Valentina ordered him.
“We are not leaving without you!” he told her angrily as the cutter swung parallel to the wall, the pilot clearly wrestling with the controls after the loss of the stabilizer.
The door exploded outward with the force of several grenades that had been thrown by the troops coming up the stairwell. Valentina did not even bother to wait for a target: she just began to fire rhythmically into the smoke-filled doorway. Parts of a man flew out of the smoke, then more.
Then one of them low-crawled through the doorway, below her line of sight. He fired his weapon at her on full automatic, and her body flew back against the red brick of the pillar, dancing like a marionette as the bullets slammed into her. She slumped to the ground, leaving wide streaks of blood on the brick pillar.
The soldier’s success was cut short by a vicious burst of rifle fire from the cutter: Mills hung out of the open hatch, Sabourin holding onto his utility belt to keep him from falling, smoke swirling from the muzzle of his rifle. One of the other Marines pumped a magazine of rifle-fired grenades down the stairwell, blowing apart the other Russians still inside.
Sabourin let go of Mills as the cutter bounced against the side of the wall, and he jumped to where Dmitri and Ludmilla knelt next to Valentina. He moved to scoop her up, but Dmitri pushed him away.
“I will take her,” he said, tears running down his face. “I will carry her.”
With Ludmilla weeping beside him, he gathered up Valentina’s shattered body in his arms and carried her aboard the cutter, a grim-faced Mills covering his back.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“The Messenger moves away from us,” the senior warrior at the tactical station reported, “toward the planet.”
“He fears us,” Li’ara-Zhurah replied from her position in the ship’s command chair. She was in many ways junior to most of the other warriors on the ship, but they acceded to her authority both because she was Tesh-Dar’s chosen one, and because the pendants she had earned in battle placed her higher on the steps to the throne. Her own self-confidence had wavered slightly when she had first come aboard the ship, after Tesh-Dar had given her permission to assist the Messenger and heal him. Yet after a few moments in the command chair, her fears of any inadequacy faded away: she was a blood daughter of the Empress, and to this she had been born. “He does not understand the Way, nor his place in it, Ulan-Tyr.”
Ulan-Tyr nodded understanding, although the emotions flowing in her Bloodsong betrayed her skepticism. She did not doubt the Messenger’s place or importance, only the concept that he could not comprehend it himself.
They continued to pursue the fleeing human ship, gradually closing the range. At first, Li’ara-Zhurah had been surprised that the humans had not fired on their pursuers, but then remembered that nuclear detonations could destroy the primitive electronic components that were critical to the functioning of ships of this technological epoch. The Messenger’s ship apparently had some sensors remaining that could detect other ships, but no functioning weapons with which to engage them. This made Li’ara-Zhurah’s mission much, much easier: otherwise, the human ship would have been able to fire on her with impunity, for she could not return fire without fear of harming the Messenger whom she had come to save. The nature of her mission also required her to board the other ship, to take the healing gel to the Messenger. She suspected that the ship’s crew would be largely incapacitated from radiation poisoning, but she knew enough about humans after fighting them on Keran not to underestimate them. Her mission of mercy would not be bloodless.
“Mistress!” Ulan-Tyr suddenly called for her. “Five human vessels are breaking from low orbit and moving to intercept the Messenger’s ship!”
Li’ara-Zhurah got up from the command chair and moved closer to the tactical display. “Are these ships native to this world, of the fleet that launched the nuclear weapons?”
“They were not part of the main body, mistress,” Ulan-Tyr said as she analyzed the information the ship’s computer provided, “but they appear to be of this world, not of the Messenger’s fleet.”
“All ahead flank!” Li’ara-Zhurah ordered. She had been closing on the Messenger’s ship gradually, in hopes he might understand that she meant him no harm. Had any of her warriors been able to speak his language, she would even have attempted to communicate with him
. As it was, there was no point: each of them would only hear gibberish from the other. This was clearly a case where action would speak far louder than words; she hoped he would understand her intentions.
* * *
“Captain! Captain!”
Sato heard a familiar voice as if he were at the bottom of a deep well and they were shouting down at him from the opening far above. Unwillingly, he forced his eyes open. He was still on the bridge, slumped in his command chair, the combat straps holding him in place. He turned to see Bogdanova, now sitting at the navigation console. She looked terrible, just like he felt. “What is it, Bogdanova?” he asked, nearly choking on the taste of blood in his mouth. Only through a supreme effort of will was he able to keep himself from throwing up.
“The Kreelan ship following us must have gone to flank speed, sir,” she rasped. On the main display, the enemy ship was quickly closing the gap between them.
“Are they in firing range?” Sato asked, confused.
“Sir, they’ve been in range of our weapons — if they were working — for at least ten minutes, maybe more. So I assume they could have hit us, too.”
She suddenly doubled over, groaning, as a wave of nausea hit her. Sato empathized with her, but there was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of them could do. Every one of them was a dead man or woman walking. Even if they could get to a major planetside hospital, he doubted that most of his crew could be saved.
“I wonder why they suddenly accelerated,” Sato mused as Bogdanova pushed herself back upright, panting.
“Because of these...I think, captain,” she managed. On the main screen two bright objects, clearly ships, were heading straight for them, the glowing disk of Saint Petersburg behind them. “There are ships coming up from Saint Petersburg, sir,” Bogdanova rasped. “It’s hard to tell without the main sensors, but I think they may be some of the coast guard vessels. I can only find two, but it’s possible there may be more. Coming right for us.”
“Is this radio still rigged up?” Sato asked suddenly.
“Yes, sir,” she said, nodding.
Sato pushed the radio transmit button. “Saint Petersburg vessels approaching CNS Yura, be advised that we surrender. Repeat: we surrender! Our crew is suffering from acute radiation poisoning and needs medical attention—” He broke off as he saw flashes winking from the two ships visible on the screen, and then flashes from three more ships that were in the planet’s shadow, hidden in the darkness. “Damn them!” he hissed. “All hands, brace for impact,” he shouted. “Pass the word!” As the crewmen relayed his warning to the rest of the ship, he ordered, “Helm, bring us to two-three-six mark one-six-five. Can we get any more speed out of engineering?”
“We’re at redline now, sir,” Bogdanova reported as the ship began to turn sluggishly to port, her bow raising up over Saint Petersburg’s north pole.
Sato gritted his teeth in frustration as he watched the scene on the display move all too slowly.
“Engineering could only get one fusion core operating and stable,” she explained, “so we’re only at twenty percent of full power.”
Sato had known that, of course, but something didn’t add up. The Kreelan ship, he suddenly realized. We were a sitting duck. Why hadn’t they closed the range and finished us off, he wondered, instead of creeping up behind them until the Saint Petersburg ships showed up?
“Estimated time to impact?” Sato asked. The Russian ships had continued to fire, pouring a steady stream of shells in their direction. Sato had no doubt that no matter how he maneuvered, Yura would be heading into a solid wall of steel, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Bogdanova and the other handful of bridge crewmen turned to him with pained expressions on their faces.
“Without the sensors, or at least some way of gauging the range to the enemy ships, we have no way of knowing, sir,” Avril said quietly. “But probably soon.”
“Look!” Bogdanova cried as the main display suddenly filled with the bulk of the sleek Kreelan warship as it pulled alongside Yura, matching her course and speed with uncanny precision. “What are they doing?”
Sato clenched his hands on the arm rests of his combat chair, waiting for a cloud of warriors to spring forth from the enemy vessel, warriors they would be powerless to repel with most of the ship’s combat systems inoperative and its crew, including the Marines who had remained aboard, largely incapacitated.
He waited, but they didn’t come. Then, in a moment of utter clarity, he understood that the Kreelan ship had placed itself between Yura and the Saint Petersburg ships. “Good, God,” he breathed. “They’re shielding us!”
As he spoke, the Kreelan ship was surrounded with a halo of crimson and emerald fireworks as the weapons on her far side began to fire at the incoming Russian shells and the ships that had fired them.
* * *
Tesh-Dar gasped as she saw what Li’ara-Zhurah was doing on the tactical display. “No, my daughter,” she breathed as tiny icons representing the inbound human shells fell like rain upon Li’ara-Zhurah’s ship. Many were stopped by the ship’s point defense weapons, yet it was inevitable that some would get through. Li’ara-Zhurah was furiously returning fire at the attacking human vessels, which had immediately begun evasive maneuvers. While there were more of them, and they were clearly heavily armed, they were small and could not take much damage. Torpedoes arced out from Li’ara-Zhurah’s ship, vaporizing first one, then another of the attackers. Then the remaining three closed in, firing non-stop as they came. “Maneuver,” she whispered, willing Li’ara-Zhurah to get out of the way of the incoming bombardment. “You must move clear!”
Li’ara-Zhurah’s ship did not move, but stayed abeam of the Messenger’s ship, shielding it from the rain of fire from the other human vessels. Tesh-Dar did not have to reach out with her second sight to see the battle: she could feel it all in the Bloodsong of Li’ara-Zhurah and the others on her ship. She did not have to know exactly what they thought, for she could sense their fear or trepidation. There was none. Only fierce pride and joy that they would bring great glory to the Empress.
In that moment, Tesh-Dar realized that Li’ara-Zhurah would not hesitate to give her life and that of her unborn child for the Messenger. It was an epiphany bound in pride for the young warrior whom she had chosen as her successor, and fear that Fate would somehow snatch her away.
For one of the very few times in her life, Tesh-Dar, high priestess of the Desh-Ka and the Empire’s most-feared warrior, was captured by indecision. She considered sending other ships to assist Li’ara-Zhurah, but the senior shipmistresses were fully engaged with the large human force here. Moreover, it would not do to coddle Li’ara-Zhurah: if she were to become what Tesh-Dar hoped, she must be able to face and survive the challenges placed before her; she must find her own Way. She would also resent Tesh-Dar’s interference, and rightly so.
At last, doing her best to force aside her mounting anxiety for Li’ara-Zhurah and the child she carried, the child that Tesh-Dar had allowed to be carried into battle instead of being safely sequestered on a nursery world, Tesh-Dar decided to simply watch the situation closely, content in the knowledge that she could yet intervene, if necessary.
Having decided that internal struggle for the moment, she decided that the next phase of the battle for this planet was to begin. Perhaps it would draw the attention from the three ships clawing at Li’ara-Zhurah as she sought to defend the Messenger. Closing her eyes, she sought out the thread in the Bloodsong of one of the other warrior priestesses who waited nearby with a special fleet. The streams of their spirits touched and briefly entwined, and in that moment Tesh-Dar’s emotions conveyed a simple message: It is time.
* * *
“My Marines are marching on the main spaceport now,” Grishin said through the vidcom. “We hope to find a ship that can transport us back to the fleet.”
“We could send our cutters down to ferry you back,” Hanson told him.
G
rishin shook his head. “We will not last long,” he explained. “We no longer have the element of surprise, we are low on ammunition, and our cutter is badly damaged. Korolev’s troops will finish us long before we could get everyone ferried back. We will either find a ground to orbit freighter with which we can link up with you, or a ship with jump drive. If the latter, we will need additional crewmen to man it, assuming the cutter pilots can get it off the ground.”
“You’ll have them,” Hanson promised. “Just get your butts into space, colonel.”
“New contacts!” cried the flag tactical officer on Constellation’s flag bridge. “Eight...ten...no, shit...” He paused, a look of disbelief on his face as he stared into his console display. Turning to Commodore Hanson, he said, “One hundred and seventeen new contacts just jumped in-system, ma’am. So far.”
“Are you sure...?” Hanson’s voice died away as she studied the tactical display. The count spiraled upward until it finally stopped: two hundred and forty-three ships. She looked at the data displays next to each of them, almost unreadable because there were so many ships. Half of them appeared to be warships in the heavy cruiser class. The others were huge. “My God,” she exclaimed. “Two kilometers long, massing half a million tons? Those numbers can’t be right!”
“I think they are, commodore,” the flag captain interjected. “Look.” The ship’s main telescope was now focused on the mass of ships that had jumped in, dangerously close to Saint Petersburg’s gravity well. Their markings, large cyan runes over a brilliant green on the sleek hulls, left no doubt as to whose ships they were.
“The small one there,” the flag captain highlighted a vessel that was perhaps an eighth the size of the larger ones around it, “is about the size of a heavy cruiser. If I had to guess, I’d say these are troop transports. Massive ones.”
In Her Name: The Last War Page 71