CHAPTER SIXTY
Valentina wiped her face with the waterless cleansing cloth, then stared into the mirror of the tiny lavatory, savoring a few precious moments alone.
She, Mills, and the other four members of the recon team had been crammed aboard a hastily modified courier ship that had originally been designed for a crew of two. The two pilots kept mostly to the cramped cockpit, leaving the Marines to fend for themselves in the midships area, which had been stripped of equipment and expanded with some welded-on sections that held the Marines’ bunks. There was enough room in an aisle to move around, if you could make your way past the crates of equipment and weapons that were bolted to the walls and floor. There was no exercise equipment and nothing with which to entertain themselves but the ship’s library of vids and books, and the Marines’ imaginations, of course.
The ship reeked of stale sweat and unchecked body odor. Aside from the waterless wash towels, which never got their bodies truly clean and left an oily residue, they had no way to clean up. There was enough water aboard for drinking, and that was all. The deodorants the pilots tried to use to mask the smell only made it worse, and after some dire threats from the Marines, they wisely chose to stop using them.
They had only been cooped up in the courier for three days, but the overly close quarters, complete lack of privacy, and the stress of the high stakes mission had made the trip seem like weeks. Tempers were running high, and Mills had been forced to break up arguments that had threatened to erupt into potentially lethal violence.
The Marines were counting the nanoseconds until they could get off what they had begun calling the “pig boat.”
The only place anyone could have any privacy was in the tiny lavatory, which some naval architect had the foresight to modify to accommodate the extra waste produced by the tiny ship’s oversize crew.
Both of the courier’s pilots were women who kept largely to themselves in the cockpit, and Valentina was one of only two women on the recon team. The other woman, Ella Stallick, who was the team’s demolition specialist, was built like a champion wrestler and had a face to match, replete with a scar and twice-broken nose.
That left Valentina to deal with the brunt of the overdose of testosterone from the men on her team. In an effort to avoid any unpleasantness, she had taken to spending most of her time out of her bunk in the door to the cockpit, standing silent vigil with the pilots as the point of light that was Alger’s World slowly grew brighter.
Almost there, she thought. Soon they’d be making their final approach to the planet, with the courier darting in to land the team.
The biggest question was what the Kreelans had in the system. So far, it was all good news. There were only seven destroyers, all in orbit over the planet. A heavy cruiser had appeared the day before, but had quickly departed.
The pilots were confident that they would be able to dodge the destroyers easily enough, drop the Marines, and then jump to safety.
Now all they needed was the final execution order. It was a failsafe in case the mission had been called off or delayed. If they didn’t get the final go order within the next twelve hours, they would jump back to Earth space and terminate the mission.
Part of Valentina wanted desperately to go home, to be out of this stinking sardine can and be back in the safe and sweet-smelling woods around her home in Virginia.
Another part of her, the part that had defined most of her adult life, wanted to get on the ground and do nothing but kill Kreelans. Unlike the Marines (she had refused to formally join the Corps, but had deployed as a civilian contractor), she had never fought the aliens, only humans. But she had no doubt she could kill them better than any of the Marines could.
The door to the lavatory, which was only a glorified closet with a waterless toilet, mirror, and a small medicine cabinet, opened. The door wasn’t equipped with a lock or occupancy indicator.
“I’m not done yet-” was all she managed to say before a large hand roughly clamped down on her mouth.
It was Ely Danielson, the team’s communications technician. He had been extremely persistent in his amorous pursuit of Valentina until Mills had finally put him in a painful headlock and threatened to break his neck.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” Danielson breathed as he shoved her backward against the bulkhead, using his other hand to close the flimsy door behind him. “I just want to-”
Her right hand shot upward in a sword strike, the rigid fingers jabbing into the vulnerable spot under his jaw, then drove her knee into his unprotected groin.
Gagging, he let her go and sagged to his knees, his hands instinctively going to his groin.
Valentina wasn’t quite finished with him. She shoved both thumbs into his mouth and stretched it open so violently that the skin at the corners split and began to bleed.
Danielson screamed.
“When a girl says no,” she said softly, her breathing barely above its normal slow rhythm, “she means no. The only reason I’m going to let you live is because we need you for this mission. But if you ever try to touch me or the other women again, I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?”
He nodded emphatically, or gave the impression of doing so as best he could. She was still holding his mouth stretched open with her thumbs while her fingertips dug into the nerves behind his ears.
Letting one side of his mouth go, she reached for the door latch.
Before she could touch it, the door flew open. Mills stood there, his face red with fury. He held a combat knife in his hand.
“No need.” She shoved Danielson out of the lavatory. He fell backward into a groaning heap in the narrow aisle.
Putting his knife back into its scabbard, Mills shook his head. “Danielson, you have no idea how far out of your league you are, mate.”
“I...just...had to pee.” Dannielson wheezed out the words as he struggled to get to his knees. “She was hogging the head.”
That caused Valentina, who wasn’t easily given to laughter, to chuckle. “Well, sorry, then.” She hoisted him up by the belt and shoved him into the lavatory before closing the door. “It’s all yours.”
“Jesus,” Mills muttered. “What a fuckup. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. He’s here for the mission, not his personality. He just needs to grow up a little.”
“Well, after what you did to him, we may not have to worry about him propagating his genes.”
That brought a big smile to Valentina’s face, and Mills threw back his head and laughed.
“Mills,” the courier’s senior pilot called, “we’ve got the go order!”
“About time!” He grinned at Valentina.
“That’s not all,” the pilot went on, a strain of worry creeping into her voice. “We’ve had a last minute change in plans.”
“What kind of change?” Mills didn’t like last minute changes in missions. They had a tendency to get people killed.
“The courier that laser-linked the orders to us is coming in to dock. It looks like someone else is going to be joining your little party.”
* * *
Ku’ar-Marekh crept silently through the woods two dozen leagues from the human town where her warriors had made their main encampment. She was alone, save for the unfamiliar forest creatures around her and the sense of the humans who lay ahead, those she was hunting.
She could have found them easily enough with her second sight, casting her spirit from her body to search the world around her.
Yet she chose not to, for that would have given her unfair advantage. It was for the same reason that she was making her final approach in daylight, for she knew the humans had poor night vision. While she could also slaughter the animals without ever coming in sight of them, this would bring no honor or glory to the Empress. That one thing, that duty to honor and glorify Her, was the closest thing she had left to any feeling.
She paused behind a large tree and knelt to the ground, closing her eyes. She listened to the s
ounds of the woods around her and smelled the air, her sensitive nose picking out the scents of the animals, the different varieties of trees. The faint stench of human body odor.
She could not entirely tune out the sense that the humans were near, for the powers she had inherited when she became priestess of the Nyur-A’il were as much a part of her as the heart that beat in her breast. Some of those powers she used or not, as she willed. Others simply fed her mind, as did her sight or hearing.
Opening her eyes, she found herself staring down at the cyan rune that graced her breast plate, thinking of the great honor it had been to accept the Way of the Nyur-A’il, and also of what it had cost her. She remembered, as if it were yesterday, kneeling in the ancient temple of her order, her hands locked with those of her priestess as the blazing light from the sacred crystal first touched her flesh, consummating the Change. Even with all her years of training and discipline, it was all she could do to not scream in agony as every cell in her body seemed to burst into flame. For to have done so, to have screamed or shown weakness, would have invited instant death.
When she had awakened, her priestess lay dead, and Ku’ar-Marekh’s own clothing and armor was burned to ashes. Her skin, once proud with the scars of many contests of sword and claw, was now flawless, unblemished. While she did not then know how to control them, she could sense the powers that she had inherited from her now-dead priestess. She could tell instantly that she was more than she had been before.
And yet, something else that she had once had, like the scars on her skin, had vanished. Looking at the body of her priestess, who had stood on the sixth step from the throne in the rank of Her Children, she had felt...nothing. No anguish at her death, no pride that she had gone to join the Ancient Ones in the afterlife. Not even a shard of self-pity that she would not be able to teach Ku’ar-Marekh about her new powers. All emotion, all feeling, was gone. Her memories, even of the ceremony of the Change, when she had never been more honored, elated, and frightened, did not stir her soul or quicken her heart. It was as if they were the memories of someone else, gray and empty.
The Bloodsong, which bound together the Children of the Empress, still flowed in her veins, but only as a source of power. The tide of emotions from her sisters in blood that ebbed and flowed within it were no more to her now than the rise and fall of the waves of a long dead sea. All the feelings that made up the complex tapestry of her soul were gone.
Even the knowledge that all the Children of the Empress, every soul in an empire that spanned ten thousand suns, would die if they failed in their search for the First Empress and the One failed to move her. That their race was within but a few generations of extinction had become nothing more than a dry fact.
Drawing her mind away from what she could not change, Ku’ar-Marekh focused on the present. Somewhere ahead was a small band of humans that had proven particularly adept at inflicting serious losses on her warriors before melting away into the woods. They were well-armed with weapons of which the Empress would approve, without any of the more advanced systems that made the battle more between machines than true combatants.
She had tracked them this far mainly by scent. The humans, for all their cunning, could not completely mask their odor, or that of the weapons they used. She could identify eleven unique human scents, along with traces of oil and chemical residue of weapons that had been recently fired. They had covered their tracks extremely well, and...
She heard the faint mechanical sound of a trigger being pulled back ever so slightly. In a blur of motion, she drew one of her three shrekkas and hurled it at a patch of leaves on the ground at the base of a pile of large rocks not far ahead of her. As the weapon left her hand, she leaped into the air toward where the human animal lay in ambush, her body sailing between the trees as if she were borne on the wind.
The shrekka tore into her prey, and Ku’ar-Marekh was rewarded with the animal’s shriek of agony as the shrekka’s blades ripped down the human’s spine.
She drew her sword in mid-air and did a graceful forward flip. Landing with her legs astride the writhing human, she stabbed the sword downward, the gleaming tip spearing the creature through the heart.
Ku’ar-Marekh snatched another shrekka from her shoulder and hurled it at a human whose head had poked out from among the rocks above her. The creature had no time to cry out as the whirling blades took its head from its neck in a spray of crimson.
She leaped again, this time to the top of the rock outcropping where she found two more humans armed with rifles. She took the head from one with her sword, and simply grabbed the other one and tossed him bodily from the rock, ignoring his scream as he fell to the ground below.
Four. Ku’ar-Marekh mentally tallied the kills, knowing there were at least seven more. She could feel the surge of power in the Bloodsong, but the elation, the ecstasy she had once felt were missing. It was a bright light that flared in her heart, but brought no warmth to her soul.
Four humans emerged from where they had been sheltering in the rocks. All of them opened fire on her with their rifles.
The bullets came within an arm’s length of her body and simply fell from the air, so hot that they instantly melted into small pools of metal that set the leaves smoldering.
Pausing to gape at what their eyes told them, yet clearly not believing what they saw, the humans continued to fire, and the other three she had knew must be here stepped from behind the rocks and joined in.
Between them, they fired hundreds of rounds at her, until their magazines ran dry and a pool of molten metal sizzled on the ground before Ku’ar-Marekh.
Two of the humans tried to run, and she was upon them in an instant, her sword flashing as she leaped beyond the ring of fire that now surrounded her.
Another charged at her, brandishing a knife, and in the blink of an eye she slammed her sword back into its scabbard and faced her opponent with only her claws. He was skilled and fearless, but was no match for her. After toying with him enough to satisfy her honor, she clawed the knife from his hand, then drove the talons of one hand into his throat.
She whirled as the remaining four humans attacked her. She did not bother to draw her sword. One of them came at her with a knife, but only used it as a diversion. When the human was close enough, he simply grabbed her in a bear hug and shoved her backward, no doubt hoping to pin her to the ground while the remaining humans finished her off.
Using the animal’s momentum, she leaped backward, sailing into the air with the human clinging to her, terrified. She grasped its head and twisted it until the neck snapped, then tossed the animal away before landing on her feet.
Looking up, she saw that the surviving humans, which she had expected to try and run, were instead coming straight at her, bellowing what must have passed for war cries.
Then she noticed what they held in their hands. Explosive grenades.
A fair contest, then, she told herself. Focusing on them, she reached out with her spirit and found their hearts. Then she began to squeeze.
The three humans collapsed in mid-stride, the grenades, all of them armed, rolling from their twitching hands.
Ku’ar-Marekh released her hold on their hearts and watched just long enough to see the realization dawn in their eyes of how their lives would be ended.
By their own grenades.
Then she leaped away, gliding to the ground below.
Behind her, the three humans were consumed by thunder and flame.
* * *
“I don’t fucking believe this.” Mills stood between the pilots as they guided the ship to rendezvous with the incoming courier. “If the Kreelans don’t pick up on this stunt, I’ll eat my drawers.”
“You’re probably safe on that count, Mills.” The pilot’s voice was tense as she watched the head-up display that showed the soft-dock approach of the other ship. “Our buddies here had good timing. The ESM sensors aren’t chirping at us.”
The Electronic Surveillance Measures, or ESM, suite o
n the ship was designed to warn the crew if any signals from enemy ships were strong enough to detect them. When they were near the detection threshold, the system warned the crew with a variety of chirps and automated voice warnings.
“I don’t give a bloody damn. We’re exposed as hell and on a tight timeline now. Whoever comes aboard had better have a good reason or I’ll wring his neck for putting us and the mission in such danger.”
A few moments later, the two ships were flying side-by-side, and there was a gentle thunk outside the airlock as the soft-dock tubes linked up. They didn’t bother to pressurize it.
“The link’s good.” The pilot confirmed the hookup to her counterpart in the other ship. “Send over your cargo.”
A few minutes later a figure in a vacuum suit moved awkwardly though the tube to enter their air lock, then turned to hit the control to close the outer door.
When the lock indicator showed it was pressurized, Mills slid the hatch open and stood in the doorway, glaring at the suited figure.
Whoever it was fumbled with the helmet catches, but Mills didn’t offer to help. He was furious.
As soon as the newcomer managed to undo the catches and began to take off the helmet, Mills lit into whoever it was.
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re the goddamn Chief of Naval Staff,” he said coldly. “Your coming here may have put the knife to all of us, and...”
“Oh, my God.” Valentina, who stood beside him, put a hand up to her mouth in surprise as the face behind the helmet was revealed.
“And here I thought you two would be happy to see me.” A woman with brunette hair handed her helmet to a stunned Roland Mills.
Mills heard someone behind him blurt, “Who the fuck is that?”
“That,” Valentina said, unable to suppress a smile, “is Stephanie Guillaume-Sato, Commodore Ichiro Sato’s wife.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“What the devil are you doing here, Steph?” Mills helped Steph strip out of her vacuum suit, revealing combat fatigues identical to his own, but without any badge of rank.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 91