“I am counting on it,” Voroshilov said with a cunning smile. “Our comrades on Saint Petersburg’s moon have not been idle in our absence, commodore. They have been launching a steady stream of mines to saturate the space surrounding the emergence point for our second jump.”
“Will our ships be safe?” Hanson asked. The last thing she needed was to jump into a mine field and have half her ships blown apart — by human-made mines.
“Yes, commodore,” Voroshilov reassured her. “The mines have been programmed to ignore your ships as well as ours. The Kreelan ships may get an unpleasant surprise, however. It is a trick we may use only once, but once might just be enough.”
“Very well, sir,” she told him. She glanced over at the flag captain, who gave her the thumbs-up sign as the status board indicated the cutter had been brought aboard and was secured. “We’re ready on your mark.”
“Stand by...” Voroshilov said tensely from the vidcom terminal. “In three...two...one...mark!”
As they had once before, the ships of the combined Confederation-Saint Petersburg fleet disappeared into hyperspace.
* * *
For a moment, no one on Mauritania’s flight deck could move as Valentina’s screams pierced their ears. Her eyes were open, her face completely slack except for her lips, which were parted wide as she screamed.
“Valentina!” Sikorsky cried, panic-stricken. “Valentina!” He reached for the interface cable, intent on pulling it away from her.
“Dmitri, no!” Ludmilla told him, grabbing his hands. “You must not!”
“I cannot let this happen,” he shouted, tears in his eyes. “I will not...”
“You promised her, Dmitri,” she told him, her face etched in anguish at the young woman’s torment. “You promised!”
“Nav systems are coming up!” Faraday suddenly shouted. “We don’t have any star charts, but we can get this fucker off the ground.” He tapped a few buttons on the console. “I’ve got control.”
Just then Valentina’s screams stopped, as if the last button Faraday had pushed turned them off. She simply lay slumped in the navigator’s seat, her eyes vacant, her body completely limp. Her mouth still hung open, as if she were still screaming.
“Is she dead?” Sikorsky asked.
The medic shook her head. “No,” she managed, her skin still crawling from seeing Valentina’s vacant expression as she’d screamed. “Her pulse and respiration are fast, but she’s alive. I don’t know how much of this she can take, though. I had no idea there would be this kind of psychological trauma.”
“She tried to warn us,” Sikorsky whispered, desperately holding Valentina’s hand. “May God forgive us.”
“Colonel!” Faraday called over the comm link. “We’re up! Get your asses on board and let’s get this tub off the ground!”
* * *
“Understood!” Grishin told Faraday, not daring to take his eyes off the drama that was playing out before him between Mills and the alien warrior. “Major Justin!” he called.
“Sir!”
“Start loading everyone aboard, as quickly as you can. Have Bravo Company of Third Battalion provide cover until the rest are aboard.” That company was actually more like a reinforced platoon in strength after it had been decimated by the Russian ambush when they’d landed, but it was in better shape than the other companies were. He hoped that the distraction Mills was providing would be enough to get most of his Marines aboard before the Kreelans started shooting again.
“What about Mills, sir?” Justin asked.
Grishin gave him a hard look. “Carry out your orders, major.”
“Yes, sir!” Justin nodded his understanding, then moved along the line of Marines, getting them moving toward the ship’s massive loading ramp.
* * *
She hasn’t lost her touch, Mills conceded as the Kreelan warrior landed another blow. He had fought his fair share of men in both combat and in barroom brawls, and it amazed him how bloody hard she was. He expected that of her metal armor, of course, but the few blows he’d managed to land on her face or the parts of her body that were not protected by metal felt like he was hitting a granite boulder. And, when she hit him, it felt like he was being hit by one.
He had his combat knife, but was hesitant to use it. To this point, she seemed content to play by the same rules as their little engagement on Keran: fists and feet only, with her essentially toying with him for her alien pleasure. He was afraid that if he pulled out his knife, she might do the same. And the smallest bladed weapon he saw on her was nearly as long as his arm, which would put him at more than a slight disadvantage.
He ducked and just managed to avoid another open-handed strike she made to his face, then darted in and landed a hard right jab to her gut, just below her breastplate. Bloody hell, he thought, how does someone get abs that hard? She grunted from the blow, however, so he gave himself a brief mental pat on the back for at least hitting her hard enough for her to notice him, just before she brought a huge fist down on his shoulder, knocking him flat on the concrete tarmac. His head slammed into the unyielding surface, and he lay there, momentarily dazed.
He didn’t see Sabourin sprint from cover toward them, her knife drawn and a look of cold hatred on her face.
* * *
“Enemy ships, close aboard!” the flag tactical officer shouted as Constellation emerged into normal space from the fleet’s first micro-jump.
“All ships, commence firing!” Hanson ordered, her spine tingling with a dreadful mixture of excitement and fear as she checked the tactical display. All her ships had made it, and their formation, while not as good as the Russians, at least had all of her vessels pointing in the same direction. They had landed on top of the bulk of Kreelan ships that remained in Saint Petersburg space, and that now circled the planet in low orbit. The huge transports and most of their smaller consorts had left, although the human fleet was still considerably outgunned.
Jesus, admiral, you cut it close, she thought as a Kreelan warship — Constellation’s current target — showed on the view screen. Even with no magnification, the sleek shark-like shape nearly filled it. Her flagship’s main batteries went to continuous fire mode, pouring shells into the Kreelan warship at point-blank range. She heard the ship’s captain order the secondary and point defense weapons to fire, as well: it was a knife fight.
She watched as the lasers etched the enemy ship’s hull, vaporizing armor plate, just before the shells from the main guns hit. The Constellation’s gunners were spot on: a dozen flashes lit the enemy ship’s flank as the shells hit home, all of them concentrated amidships. In a spectacular flash, the enemy ship’s midsection exploded, her back broken, sending the remaining bow and stern sections tumbling in opposite directions, both of them streaming air and bodies behind.
The Kreelan ship had not fired a single shot in return.
A cheer went up from the ship’s bridge crew even as the captain called for a shift in targets, and the Constellation poured fire into yet another Kreelan warship that was only slightly further away.
“Prepare for jump!” Hanson ordered. This first part of their plan was only to get the Kreelans’ attention, to poke them with a sharp stick in hopes of getting them to follow after the humans as they fled. If they stayed here any longer, her ships would be gutted.
“Coordination signal from the flag!” her navigation officer called out. Voroshilov’s flag navigation officer was coordination with his counterpart on Constellation directly, while Voroshilov and Hanson concentrated on keeping their ships alive. Their level of trust had matured at least this far, their officers were cooperating directly as fellow professionals. It was difficult for Hanson to believe that she had originally been sent here to blow the Russians out of space.
“All ships, secure for jump!” she ordered in the din of Constellation’s continued firing. The ship rocked from several shells that hit almost simultaneously. The lights dimmed ominously for a moment and several electrical p
anels overloaded, sending sparks flying across the flag bridge.
“Jump execution...” the navigation officer called as the center of the human formation tracked exactly over the pre-designated jump point, “...now!”
The Constellation disappeared along with the rest of the human fleet as a hail of heavy shells passed through the space where she had just been.
* * *
Li’ara-Zhurah knelt quietly, her eyes fixed on the Messenger, her warriors formed around her in a protective circle. Perhaps they need not have done so, for there was certainly no threat from the human crew: they were all but finished. Only one of the handful on the command deck who had still been conscious when she had arrived remained so, a female warrior who was clearly near death. The others had already slumped lifelessly to the deck.
She did not envy them the death that they faced. While they may have been soulless creatures in the eyes of the Empress and Her Children, Li’ara-Zhurah knew better than most of her sisters that the humans were worthy of respect. They had certainly earned hers during the attack against Keran. She would never understand their species or the peculiar things they did, like fighting among one another here in this system, even as Her warships descended upon them, but understanding was not required. In the end, there was only duty to serve Her honor and glory, for nothing else truly mattered. It had taken her a great deal of pain and much help from Tesh-Dar to fully understand that, but now it was a source of deep contentment.
She thought about the child she now carried in her womb, the song of its spirit strengthening hour by hour. Its melody was simple, yet strong: she would be a great warrior or clawless mistress one day, she knew, placing a hand reverently over her abdomen where she knew the child’s tiny heart had begun to beat. In time, the child’s song would grow as rich and complex as that of the countless others that flowed in the river of the Bloodsong of her race.
The Messenger’s body suddenly began to twitch, and she knew that the healing gel had run its course. Being treated with it was sometimes not a pleasant process, but her race had not suffered from disease for millennia, and virtually any injury short of destruction of the brain could be repaired, if She so willed it. His body suddenly convulsed, and the gel flowed from his mouth, out of his lungs. It had penetrated the various layers of his body, repairing the damage left behind by the radiation, or so she hoped, and at last had gathered in his lungs before exiting through the mouth.
She reverently took the gel, now laced with sickly yellow streaks, and placed it back in the tube, where it pulsed weakly. It could normally be reused after it had bonded with a healer, but this symbiont would never again know such a bonding. She would take it back with her, but it would perish long before they could return it to the Empire: treating radiation sickness was a terribly rare thing, and one of the few applications that for some reason sickened the symbionts. It was a great loss, for the healing gel was one of the most valued things in their civilization, but its sacrifice was for a worthy cause.
The Messenger lay back on the deck, his eyes fluttering open. He looked at her, his strangely-shaped eyes, narrower than most of the other humans she had seen, as if he were born squinting, then sat up to face her. She bowed her head low to honor him.
* * *
As Sato woke up, he felt wonderful. It was not simply that he was still living and breathing, but he felt truly alive, his body completely refreshed.
Opening his eyes, he saw that there was a Kreelan kneeling in front of him, head bowed, and with sudden clarity he remembered what had happened. She had used the awful goo that the Kreelans he had encountered on first contact had used to heal him, to eliminate the radiation poisoning. It would also have “fixed” anything else that was wrong with his body, something that was far, far beyond the dreams of modern human medical science.
He sat up, and she raised her eyes to meet his. He had not come across this warrior at Keran, but she obviously knew him. They all seemed to. It had been maddening during the battle of Keran, when he faced a group of warriors aboard his now-dead destroyer, and they had simply knelt before him as this warrior was now. He had been so enraged that he had wanted to kill them all, and they would have let him. In fact, it had almost seemed as if they wanted him to kill them. In the end, despite all that he had gone through, all the Kreelans had done, he couldn’t. He simply was not capable of killing in cold blood, even the aliens who had invaded the human sphere.
“Captain,” he heard a voice rasp weakly.
With a shock, he saw Bogdanova on the deck, looking up at him with glassy eyes.
“No,” he moaned, suddenly noticing the state of the bridge crew, which he knew would be reflected in the rest of his people. They were dead or dying. All of them. “Bogdanova!” He got up and made his way toward her, and the Kreelans parted to let him pass, the group of surrounding warriors melting and flowing to reform around him where he knelt next to Bogdanova. “I’m going to get you out of here,” he promised her fervently, holding her hand and brushing the hair from her eyes. Her skin was cool, far too cool, to his touch. She had seemed to be faring better than many of the others, but the radiation poisoning had clearly caught up with her. She was dying, as was the rest of his crew. “I’m going to get you out of here, all of you. You’re going to be okay.”
Turning to the warrior, he pointed to the slowly pulsating mass of goo in the tube next to her, then at Bogdanova, then the other members of the bridge crew. “Please,” he pleaded with her, “help them. Save my crew.”
The warrior gestured toward him, then the goo, holding it up for him to inspect more closely. It wasn’t the grotesque purple and pink color he remembered from the first time he had been subjected to it. This specimen was clearly damaged or diseased, leprous in appearance.
“Can’t you get more?” he demanded, pointing at the goo, then at Bogdanova again. “Goddammit,” he shouted angrily, “you saved me, why can’t you save them?”
The Kreelan simply stared at him, her silver-flecked feline eyes fixed on his. He had no idea if there was no more of the healing substance to be had, if she refused to get more, or if she simply had no idea what he was asking.
He suddenly felt a fiery rage building inside, a manifestation of his complete helplessness and his fear that, as on his first voyage when humanity had made contact with the Kreelans, he would again be left alone, the sole survivor of his crew. It was a possibility that he could not, would not accept. Not again, he thought bitterly. Please, not again.
His attention was brought back to Bogdanova as she squeezed his hand, her grip little stronger than an infant’s.
“They saved you, Ichiro,” she whispered. He and Bogdanova had been together since before the battle of Keran, and while they had never been anything more than friends and shipmates, it tore his heart out to see her like this. Tears welled up in his eyes as he watched the life slip away from her. She smiled one last time. “I’m glad they did...”
Then she was gone.
Ignoring the Kreelans, Sato picked her up and held her in his arms, tears flowing freely. “No,” he moaned. “God, why do you hate me so much?”
He was still weeping when the ship was suddenly torn apart.
* * *
“Direct hit!” cried the tactical officer aboard the CNS Southampton as her shells slammed into the Kreelan warship at point blank range. About twice the size of a heavy cruiser and already badly damaged, it was an easy mark for their first target upon emergence in the Saint Petersburg system. It had an extremely odd configuration, but no one noticed in the heat of the moment: if it was Kreelan, you shot first and didn’t bother to ask questions.
Too goddamn bad for you, Captain Moshe Braverman, the Southampton’s captain, thought savagely as the ship’s engines exploded, sending what was left of the forward hull spinning away. He turned his attention to the other three Kreelan warships that were close aboard. It had been only blind luck — whether it was good or bad depended on your point of view — that had put their task f
orce’s emergence point right on top of the Kreelans. Southampton was assigned to the second flotilla of cruisers that was supposed to have rendezvoused with Hanson’s force before jumping into the system to take the nuclear weapons away from Saint Petersburg and to defend Riga. Unfortunately, they and their escorting squadron of destroyers had been ambushed at Edinburgh by Kreelan raiders, who had put up enough of a fight to delay the task force’s arrival until now. Braverman certainly hadn’t expected to find Kreelans here, as well, but he had made sure that everyone had been fully prepared for the unexpected.
After blowing Southampton’s first target into pieces, Braverman ordered his tactical officer to shift fire to one of the other Kreelan warships that were furiously fighting back. All three of them were making full speed toward the one that Southampton had just finished off, which put them right in line with Braverman’s guns.
“Fire!” he ordered, and the ship thundered as the main batteries blasted another salvo of twenty-centimeter shells at their next target. “Anti-boarding, units, stand by,” he ordered as the enemy ships drew closer. He had been at Keran and had seen the devastation Kreelan boarding parties could wreak upon a ship, and he had no intention of letting that happen to Southampton. Just as another Kreelan cruiser exploded, he said, “Continue firing. Let’s show these Kreelan bitches how it’s done.”
Blazing away at the remaining pair of Kreelan ships, Southampton and her sisters sailed by the remains of CNS Yura and the Kreelan warship that had been bound to her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Tesh-Dar was enjoying the challenge posed by the human warrior. While she could easily have killed him, giving him a chance such as this to fight brought greater glory to the Empress, and also served as a useful lesson for her warriors, who watched the combat with rapt attention.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 77