“Colonel, did you catch all that?” she said urgently to Grishin.
“Yes, commodore,” he told her. “It appears that a Kreelan invasion force has just joined our quaint little party. Do not worry about us. Fight your ships, and we will contact you when we are on our way.” He paused. “I truly hope to not have to fight them on the ground again. Not now.”
“I understand, colonel,” Hanson told him. “Good luck.”
“Godspeed, commodore,” Grishin said just before his image faded to black on her console.
Hanson sat back, stunned at the size of the enemy fleet. She watched, speechless, as the armada moved in, taking up orbit around Saint Petersburg.
“Orders, ma’am?” the flag captain asked quietly.
Hanson heard his voice as if in a dream. She had kept the task force at arm’s length from both the original Kreelan fleet and the Russians, firing at the former when she could while trying to avoid being fired upon by the latter. It was like sparring in a boxing match, but with three boxers in the ring, all fighting one another. Saint Petersburg is lost, she thought. There’s no way we could help them, even if they let us. Even if every warship from Earth and the Alliance were here, they still wouldn’t be enough.
“You can’t run now,” a vaguely familiar voice said quietly. “You have a duty to the men and women on that planet who need you to get them out of this, to bring them home.”
She turned to find Torvald, her resident spymaster, standing beside her combat chair, staring at her. His words snapped her out of her dark reverie. “I don’t get paid to run, mister,” she told him angrily, “but I’ll also be damned if I’m going to lose my entire goddamn task force! In case you can’t add, we’re slightly outnumbered here.”
The flag bridge became utterly silent, with every member of her staff, even the flag captain, studiously looking anywhere but toward her and Torvald.
“I’ll do everything I can to get my people — including your agent — off the planet,” Hanson went on in a quieter voice, forcing the words through gritted teeth as she jabbed a finger into Torvald’s chest, “but I don’t need the likes of you to remind me of my duty. Now, if there’s nothing else, get the hell off my bridge before I have the Marines throw you in the brig.”
Torvald looked at her impassively, then quietly turned and left the flag bridge.
Orders, she thought, pushing Torvald from her mind. What orders can I give in a situation like this?
Before she could say anything, the flag tactical officer said, “The Saint Petersburg fleet is trying to disengage with the first Kreelan force, commodore. It looks like they’re trying to come about to intercept the invasion fleet.”
Hanson nodded. That gave her something to work with. “Communications,” she ordered, “try to raise Admiral Voroshilov from the Saint Petersburg fleet again. Let’s see if he might like our help now.”
* * *
“The sensors cannot be correct. This must be some sort of electronic maskirovka, a deception by the Confederation fleet,” Korolev’s image said decisively.
“Comrade chairman,” Admiral Voroshilov said, fighting to restrain his anger, “the sensor readings you see are correct. We have verified the size of these massive vessels with every type of sensor, including optical measurement. There is no doubt. And from their design and markings, they are clearly nothing like the Confederation ships. The Kreelan threat is real, and they are here. I believe these ships to be troop transports. You must have Marshal Antonov activate the military reserves immediately, and bring the remaining orbital and planetary defense sites to full readiness. We should also activate Riga’s defense forces—”
“Limit yourself to things you understand, admiral,” Korolev said, the threat in his voice plain. “Marshal Antonov shall handle the planetary defenses as he sees fit. You will concern yourself with dealing with this new Confederation threat.”
The vidcom suddenly went blank.
Voroshilov sat in his command chair, seething. Even now, with the enemy at the gates, Korolev was in complete denial. He looked up at the tactical display and the icons of the massive enemy ships encircling his planet like a string of bloody pearls. He was a Party man and always had been, but he was also a patriot who had devoted his life to the military and fervently believed in the oath he took to defend his people. These aliens, whatever they were and wherever they were from, had come to destroy his motherland and his people. They, not the Confederation, were the enemy. The path of his duty was crystal clear, even if it would cost him his life in front of a firing squad. Korolev did not look favorably upon those who committed treason.
“Is the Confederation flagship still hailing us?” he asked his communications officer.
“Yes, sir, continuously.” the officer said. “I have ignored them as you instructed.”
“Tell them that I wish to speak to Commodore Hanson at once,” Voroshilov ordered.
The officer gaped at him for a moment before turning his attention back to his console, quickly obeying his orders.
In seconds, Hanson’s face appeared on the secondary viewscreen. “Admiral Voroshilov,” she said formally.
“Commodore, let us dispense with any formalities,” he said bluntly. “I am committing treason merely by speaking with you, but I have no choice if I am to have any chance of saving my homeworld...if it can be saved. I would like to accept your offer of assistance against the aliens, if it still stands.”
Hanson frowned. “Admiral, your fleet has repeatedly fired on us when we tried to assist you earlier. What assurance do I have that you’re not pulling us into a trap?”
“Commodore, I give you my personal word of honor,” Voroshilov said earnestly. “There is nothing else of substance that I can provide.”
Hanson nodded. “I’ll accept that, admiral, but I want assurances that your ground forces will not launch any further attacks on our Marines on the planet, and will let them depart peacefully.”
“I can give you no such assurance, commodore,” Voroshilov said grimly. “Our leaders believe the invaders are Confederation ships in disguise, bringing yet more of your Marines, and I have not been able to convince them otherwise. Your people will have to fight their way to safety if they are to survive.” He paused. “Commodore, I have not informed the chairman that I am asking for your assistance. Assuming I survive the rest of this battle, I will most likely be shot for my troubles. In that way,” he glanced around the flag bridge at his officers, who were watching the discussion with expressions ranging from utter surprise to quiet resignation, “my subordinates may be spared the same fate.”
After a brief moment’s consideration, Hanson said, “Very well, admiral, I agree. If I may, I suggest that we attempt to break contact with the first group of Kreelan ships you have been fighting and focus our efforts on disrupting the invasion force. Our sensors indicate that they’re already deploying smaller vessels to the surface. We don’t have much time...”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Li’ara-Zhurah held on to her combat chair, the restraints digging into her shoulders and waist as the ship shuddered violently beneath her. The command deck was wreathed in smoke from a fire in the electrical system, the acrid stench of burning metal and plastic still burning in her nose.
“We are heavily damaged, mistress,” the tactical controller reported, fighting to keep her voice level. Her hands had been badly burned when her console had exploded from a short-circuit of the electrical system that had started the fire. Li’ara-Zhurah had pulled her away from the burning console, while others had put out the flames. The controller had refused to leave her post, and had managed to reroute the controls to another station on the bridge. “We cannot long survive unless we destroy the human ship.” To retreat, she well knew, to abandon the Messenger, was unthinkable.
The human ships, while small, had been most worthy adversaries. Armed to the teeth and far more resilient than Li’ara-Zhurah had given them credit for, the five human ships had crippled her own ve
ssel. The cost had been high: four of them had been destroyed, and the fifth was damaged. Li’ara-Zhurah was impressed with the fortitude of its commander: even though the ship had clearly suffered grievous damage in the fight, she — or he — had not given up. Apparently grasping that Li’ara-Zhurah’s ship was protecting the Messenger’s vessel, he had changed his tactics, maneuvering to use it as a shield from Li’ara-Zhurah’s guns. They were at knife-fighting range in space, the three vessels locked in a deadly orbit around one another at a range of no more now than a few ship lengths.
“Send forth the warriors,” Li’ara-Zhurah ordered. Over a hundred of the ship’s crew had been preparing for boarding operations as the human ship had drawn closer. It did not appear to have the deadly close-in defense weapons that ships such as the Messenger’s vessel mounted, and that had proven so devastating in the battle for Keran. She only hoped that the Messenger understood what her warriors were doing, and did not fire on them himself.
At a word from the tactical controller, airlocks in the ship’s flank cycled open and warriors in space armor poured into the utter silence of the raging battle, their thruster packs propelling them toward the remaining human attacker.
* * *
“Captain!” Bogdanova cried. “Warriors!”
Sato looked up at the visual display and his blood ran cold at what he saw. “No...” he breathed. A cloud of Kreelans in space combat armor left the alien ship, speeding toward them across the few hundred meters of empty space that was all that separated the badly wounded vessels.
Yura rocked again as the Russian ship pounded her with another broadside, even as the Kreelan ship swept over, trying to protect Sato’s command. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he could only be thankful for the Kreelan’s intervention.
“Preparing close-in defense mortars,” Bogdanova said, her hands now flying over the console’s controls, the effects of radiation sickness be damned. The weapons were a cheap but incredibly effective innovation that had saved the then-Terran ships from the menace of Kreelan boarders during the battle for Keran. Nothing more than large-bore mortars, they fired projectiles up to a few hundred meters from the ship. The mortar bombs then exploded in a cloud of shrapnel that would tear any warrior, even wearing space armor, to shreds, but not cause any significant damage to any ships, even at very close range. While none of the weapons that required more sophisticated sensors were working, the mortars, which were “dumb” weapons, were still functional.
“Standing by to fire, sir,” she said, her voice shaking. She had been aboard Sato’s first command, the destroyer Owen D. McClaren, when it had been badly damaged and boarded by Kreelan raiders. It was an experience she did not wish to relive. “Firing...”
“Belay that!” Sato snapped, looking carefully at the warriors as they swarmed across their field of view. “They’re not coming for us,” he said. “They’re going after the Russian ship!”
Bogdanova’s hand didn’t move from the firing console. “Captain,” she asked, her voice quavering, “are you sure?”
“Yes,” he reassured her. “Look at them! They’re sweeping right past us!”
On the screen, they watched as the warriors jetted past Yura’s torn hull, some of them coming to land on the ship for an instant before pushing off again, using Yura to adjust their trajectory.
The Russian ship began to fire at them, but it was too little, too late. Unlike larger warships, she had no close-in defense weapons, and the Kreelan warriors attacked her hull like black-clad locusts. Sato saw the flare of the boarding charges the Kreelans used to blow entry holes in the hull of the target ship. But they weren’t content with making one hole: they made dozens. The ship’s outer hull was being flayed from her keel, with chunks of hull being blown outward by the air pressure within, with everything — including the crewmen — being blasted out into space. Then the warriors crawled inside, and Sato could well imagine the carnage that followed. Even though the Russians had tried to kill him and his ship, he didn’t wish on anyone what he knew was happening to them now.
He closed his eyes as the Kreelan ship that had been protecting them slid beside Yura, blocking their view just as the captain of the Russian vessel detonated his ship’s self-destruct charges.
* * *
Dmitri Sikorsky sat in the rear of the cutter, still cradling Valentina’s body. Ludmilla was next to him, leaning on his shoulder, her eyes firmly closed against the horrors around her. The Marines were crammed into the ship, sitting in the combat chairs or standing in the aisle, their uniforms blackened and dirty, many of them wounded. Their bodies swayed in time with the sickening roll of the badly damaged cutter as if they were on a ship at sea. Their faces, streaked with camouflage paint and sweat, betrayed nothing but numbed exhaustion.
He stared at Valentina’s face, haunted by the last image he had of his own daughter when she was hauled away by the secret police. Proud. Defiant. How much Valentina reminded him of her. He had already cried all the tears his body had to give, but he felt a crushing burden of grief and guilt. It should have been him who died, he thought over and over again. It should have been him the secret police had taken, not his daughter. And would it not have been better for him, who had lived a long and full life, to have died, rather than Valentina?
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force away the bitter waste of his life. Ludmilla was his only comfort now, but he feared they were both among the walking dead. Either the secret police or the Red Army would kill them, or the Kreelans would. Were it not for his determination to get Ludmilla to safety, he would have welcomed death.
He felt a hand touch his face, and a soft voice spoke, barely audible over the rumble of the cutter’s engines.
“Dmitri...”
He opened his eyes and his heart leaped into his throat as he saw Valentina looking up at him, her mouth curled up in a gentle blood-smeared smile.
“Valentina!” he cried. “You...you were dead! They checked you!”
Ludmilla sat up at his exclamation, her eyes wide with shock.
“Pomogitye!” Sikorsky shouted. The colonel, Grishin, snapped his head around, but then Sikorsky remembered that the others probably did not understand Russian. “Help!” he cried in Standard. “Help me! She is alive!”
The female sergeant, Sabourin, was at his side instantly. With one look at Valentina, she shouted, “Medic!”
“How is this possible?” Dmitri asked hoarsely, looking again at Valentina’s body. She had been hit by at least half a dozen rounds in her chest and abdomen. “You were dead, dorogaya.”
“What the fuck?” the medic cursed as she knelt next to Valentina, already checking the readouts on her field medical scanner. Addressing Sabourin, she said, “I checked her out carefully when she was brought on board, staff sergeant. But she must have some sort of implants that activated: I’m reading a ton of stimulants in her bloodstream.” Turning to Valentina, she asked pointedly, “Were you augmented?”
Valentina offered a weak smile. “Let us just say that I’m not like other girls,” she whispered before passing out.
Quickly moving to where Grishin stood, Sabourin told him, “The agent, that Valentina woman. She is alive.”
“How is that possible?” Grishin asked, shocked.
“Some sort of augmentation, according to the medic,” Sabourin said, shaking her head. “She does not know how, but the woman is very much alive.”
“Unbelievable,” Grishin whispered, looking again at where the Sikorskys and the medic hovered over Valentina. “Thank you for letting me know, staff sergeant.”
With a nod, he dismissed her before turning his focus on other matters: directly ahead lay the spaceport.
“Fighters inbound!” the copilot reported. “Firing...” The point defense weapons again blasted coherent light at the attacking aircraft, wiping them from the sky. The copilot shook his head. “Let’s hope they keep playing the game that way,” he said. “Aerospace fighters are dead meat against our laser
s.”
“As long as we can pick them up at a distance,” Faraday reminded him. “If they can get in close enough with enough weapons, we’re toast.”
“Surface-to-air defenses?” Grishin asked, his eyes scanning the console displays.
“Several heavy missile emplacements, sir,” the copilot reported, “but I don’t think they can hit us. We’re too low. Looks like the defenses were designed more to fend off a large-scale exo-atmospheric attack.”
“There’s the field!” Faraday exclaimed as the cutter roared over the outer barriers and the massive earthen berm that had been put in place as part of the port’s security features. Several dozen ships squatted on the enormous landing apron, with men and equipment — ant-like against the bulk of the big ships — busily at work next to most of them. “Let’s go shopping.”
He flew down the orderly rows of ships, scattering the ground crews below and ignoring the frantic calls from the control tower. “I don’t recognize most of these types,” he said. “A bunch of them must be locally built. I’d really rather not have to try our hand at figuring out controls in cyrillic...”
“Wait!” the copilot said. He had been scanning the ships with his sensors, trying to find matches in the cutter’s ship recognition database. “There’s a La Seyne-built light freighter in the next row to the right. According to this, she should have jump capability and only needs a flight crew of four.” He turned to Grishin and said, “They’re designed for a hundred passengers and five thousand tons of cargo. It’ll be a little tight for the Marines, but should work to get us off this rock.” Shaking his head as he looked at the other ships, most of which were far too large to get into space with only two pilots. “It’s really the only option out of all this other space junk.”
“Let us check it out, then,” Grishin said, nodding. “Mills,” he went on, “how much time until the rest of the brigade arrives?”
“One moment, sir,” Mills told him. After a brief conversation over the vidcom with the acting commander of the Marine forces now speeding through Saint Petersburg City toward the spaceport, he reported, “Major Justin estimates another thirty minutes, sir. The Russkies must have figured out what our game is and have started trying to put up blocking forces in the city, and the Major’s had to make few side trips.”
In Her Name: The Last War Page 72