The other members of the team grabbed the suit and the small case she’d brought along as the courier accelerated away from the rendezvous point, racing now toward Alger’s World.
Behind them, the ship that had brought Steph leaped away into hyperspace.
Mills had met Steph during the battle of Keran on the assault boat that had extracted them from the disastrous ground battle. She had been one of the embedded journalists attached to the 7th Cavalry Regiment, and Mills had been in what had been the Francophone Alliance’s Foreign Legion, the remnants of which had been absorbed into the new Confederation Marine Corps after being decimated at the battle of Keran. It had been designated as a regiment in the Corps, but had taken on the unofficial name of the Red Legion for the blood that had been spilled from its ranks in its final battle.
While Steph had started out in the battle as a journalist, by the time she and the other handful of survivors had escaped the abattoir the Kreelans had made of the planet, she had also become a combat veteran.
After her return to Earth, she became something of a celebrity, and that had helped catapult her to a position she had never even dreamed of, President McKenna’s press secretary. That’s the role she’d been playing in service of the Confederation.
Until now.
“The president decided that we needed a unique view of this operation to give the public.” She met his glaring gaze without the slightest trace of guilt. “She wanted someone on one of the recon teams, and I wanted to go. When I found out you were leading one, it was pretty much a given which team I’d choose.”
“And she just let you go, did she?” Mills didn’t try to mask his sarcasm as he folded his tree trunk-sized arms across his chest.
“Yes, Mills, she did. In fact, she asked me to go.” She stepped closer to him, tilting her head back to stare up at him. “You were going to be stuck with someone, regardless. So just go ahead and name another journalist who has my qualifications for this type of assignment, or that you’d rather have with you.”
Mills glared at her a moment more, then broke out into a grin. “Well, I guess better you than some fat-headed dolt who doesn’t know how to handle a weapon when the Kreelans get in sword range.” He slapped her on the shoulder, nearly knocking her off her feet. “Welcome aboard, then, girl.”
“Speaking of weapons,” Steph said, rubbing her shoulder as she regained her balance, “I take it you’ve got a spare rifle for me?” While Steph was a journalist first, she would never again go into a combat zone unarmed.
“I think we can arrange that. Do you know the op?”
“Yes, I’ve been fully briefed. I can also be a backup for Danielson.” She nodded to the comms specialist, who had just emerged from the lavatory, where he’d been trying to recover from Valentina’s knee smashing into his groin. “I went over the information for your communications gear and procedures on the trip out.”
“All right, then.” Mills sighed, not happy about the situation but resigned to the reality of it. “I just hope your surprise appearance didn’t give us away too early.”
“Maybe not too early,” the pilot called, having listened in to the conversation over the intercom, “but they’re definitely on to our game. Four of the ships in orbit are changing course.”
“Are any after us yet?” Mills called.
“I can’t tell, but they’re definitely hot and bothered now. Some of them look like they’re going after the drones, but we’re still too far away to be sure.”
The courier ships carrying the Marine recon teams weren’t the only ones that had been sent to the system. There were another two dozen smaller vessels, drones, that were programmed to follow flight profiles similar to the real ships. They were decoys designed to appear identical to the real ships to the enemy’s sensors. It was hoped they would give the couriers a better chance to slip into their insertion positions.
“Well, let’s get ready for the big game, then, shall we?”
As the others began unpacking their equipment and double-checking their weapons, Mills cornered Steph and asked quietly, “Does the commodore know you’ve come along?”
Steph looked up at him, and he saw a brief flash of pain in her expression before she could hide it. “I don’t know, Mills.” She averted her eyes, looking down at the deck. “We...we haven’t spoken in the last couple months. We separated not long after he came back from Saint Petersburg.”
“Oh.” Mills felt a fool, not quite sure what to say. “Sorry for that.”
Steph looked back up into his eyes. “Ichiro was different after he came back. The only thing he could focus on was the Kreelans, and how we could defeat them. He lost himself in working on the new ship designs. Nothing else seemed to matter. Nothing. And no one.”
Mills was feeling increasingly uncomfortable, hearing of the marital problems between a commodore and his former press secretary wife. But he couldn’t just walk away. He hadn’t known Steph all that well, but the survivors of Keran, both those who’d fought on the ground and in space, shared a special bond. There had been few enough of them.
As if reading his mind, Steph smiled, masking her inner pain. “And why am I telling a big lug of a Marine about all this? Aren’t you supposed to be yelling at people or something?”
Mills mustered a smile, but his eyes betrayed his concern for her. The mission was going to be tough enough without someone with a lot of emotional baggage weighing them down.
“Don’t worry, Mills.” She touched his arm to reassure him. “I’ve got it together.”
“Right, then,” he said, nodding. “Come on, let’s get you fitted out with proper kit. Valentina?” he called. “Could you give our, ah, journalist extraordinaire a bit of a hand?”
“Sure.” Valentina took Steph back to the crowded center aisle where the Marines were busy getting ready. She shot a glance at him over her shoulder when Steph wasn’t looking, and Mills gave her the thumbs-up sign.
She’s okay.
Valentina, who hadn’t known Steph personally, shrugged as she turned back around and helped Steph pick out weapons and other combat gear.
Mills made his way to the cockpit. “How long?”
The luminous disk of Alger’s World was huge now in the forward viewscreen. He saw a sudden bright flash against the black of space to the left.
“One of the drones just bought it.” The pilot shook her head as a green icon flickered and died on her display. A red icon depicting a Kreelan destroyer swept through the space where the drone had been just a moment before.
“Have any of the other insertion ships bought it?”
“None, yet. But...oh, shit.”
“What is it?”
The pilot pointed to a pair of red icons on the head-up display, or HUD. They were two Kreelan destroyers that had appeared from around the far side of the planet. Even Mills, who didn’t understand the trajectory data displayed on the HUD, could see that they were coming at his ship on a converging course.
The pilot turned to glance up at him. “Looks like we’ve got company.”
* * *
After killing the group of humans, Ku’ar-Marekh spent the rest of the day gathering wood from the forest to build funeral pyres for their bodies. It was an ages-old tradition to honor worthy opponents who had fallen in battle, and she had judged these to be worthy. They had inflicted many casualties upon her warriors since the Children of the Empress had come to this world, and had acquitted themselves well in the brief battle she had fought with them.
That they had never stood a chance against her was irrelevant. She nonetheless honored their sacrifice as tradition demanded.
As with most things, she did this alone. She realized that the warriors placed in her charge were deathly afraid of her, for she was not given to tolerance of the slightest flaw and had taken the lives of many who had displeased her. It was not an uncommon thing for a warrior priestess to act so, for their place among the peers of the Empire was only below the Empress Herself. But some w
ould say that Ku’ar-Marekh’s lethal punishments were...excessive. It was yet another reason why she had spent as much time as she could alone, among the stars.
None, however, even the other warrior priestesses, had ever said as much to her, save one: Tesh-Dar, the last priestess of the Desh-Ka, the oldest order that served the will of the Empress.
Of all the priestesses who still lived, she was the only one who did not fear Ku’ar-Marekh. Tesh-Dar had once counseled Ku’ar-Marekh against being so heavy-handed with her warriors. It had been in private, as much as anything could be private when their entire race was linked through the Bloodsong, for Tesh-Dar’s intention had clearly been to instruct, rather than humiliate.
But Ku’ar-Marekh, high priestess of the Nyur-A’il, was not about to be lectured by anyone, even such as Tesh-Dar.
Ku’ar-Marekh could have issued a challenge to the elder priestess, but had instead settled for giving the great priestess of the Desh-Ka a taste of the Nyur-A’il’s power. Ku’ar-Marekh no longer felt fear herself, but she knew how to instill it in others.
She reached out with her mind to take hold of Tesh-Dar’s heart.
Such was her surprise when she discovered that her ethereal claws collided with a solid wall of power. She could sense Tesh-Dar’s heart, feel it beating in the great warrior’s chest, but try as she might, Ku’ar-Marekh could not reach it.
“Try as you may, child,” Tesh-Dar whispered, “you shall fail. Issue a challenge for combat in the arena, as that is your right, but do not play such childish games with me.”
Knowing that she should feel shame, but unable to taste even those bitter ashes in her mouth, Ku’ar-Marekh knelt before Tesh-Dar and offered her neck to the elder warrior’s sword. She knew that she had disgraced herself, and that death was the only possible reward. In the cold place that was her heart, she silently wished for it. Her only hope was that in the Afterlife she might recover what the Change had taken from her.
“Take my life,” she begged. “I offer it freely.”
“No, child.” Tesh-Dar, a giant among Her Children, placed a great hand upon Ku’ar-Marekh’s head to stroke the braids of the younger priestess’s raven hair. “I can sense the emptiness in your heart, the chill of your spirit. The peers call you Dead Soul, and with good reason. I would grant your wish out of compassion, but this is not the will of the Empress. And that, above all else, must we obey. Even you, I know, can sense that much.”
Ku’ar-Marekh nodded, then stood to face Tesh-Dar. “I will not thank you for your kindness, priestess of the Desh-Ka.”
Then she had turned and left.
That had been many cycles ago. Now, kneeling before the burning pyres of the humans, Ku’ar-Marekh stared into the flames, replaying Tesh-Dar’s words. Of all those in the Empire, save the Empress Herself, Tesh-Dar was the only one who had understood Ku’ar-Marekh’s pain, a pain she herself could not feel for the emptiness inside her.
And now Tesh-Dar was gone, locked away in the ancient temple of the Desh-Ka, perhaps forever.
Fire and flame. It would be so easy to simply hurl herself into one of the flaming pyres and purge herself of this empty life. Yet she could no more do that than feel the long-gone warmth of the love of her sisters in the Bloodsong. She remained subject to the will of the Empress, a yoke around her spirit, binding her to this life.
As the flames licked higher into the sky and the bodies of the humans were gradually consumed in the fire, Ku’ar-Marekh knelt on the ground and fell into a deep meditative state. Focusing her concentration inward, she slowed her breathing until it stopped, then stopped her heart. It was the closest she could come to death, and she sought this state as often as she could, hoping to force time ahead to the moment of her blessed demise. Her only lament was that she could not hold herself in this state indefinitely.
But there, in the depths of the nothingness that shielded her from herself, she felt a sudden stirring in the Bloodsong, a surge in the excitement of her sisters. Casting her mind’s eye outward, following the strands of the chorus of the song, she found herself among the orbiting warships.
The humans had sent tiny ships into the system.
Unlike the sensors of the warships, which had intentionally been made to match the primitive capabilities of the human vessels, Ku’ar-Marekh’s second sight could tell which ships held living beings and which did not.
She would never have revealed that information to the warriors aboard her own ships, of course, for that would have violated the will of the Empress. The humans had proven themselves worthy opponents, and would be given equal or better advantage in any combat. Priestesses had more leeway in the matter in their own personal challenges, but the peers would never confer undue advantage upon themselves.
Fastening her attention upon a single human vessel that was closer than the others, Ku’ar-Marekh watched as its fate was decided.
* * *
“They’ve got us,” the pilot called back to where Mills now sat, strapped into one of the fold-out seats against the inner wall of the hull.
“Damn.” Mills shook his head, looking at Valentina. The plan had called for the courier to set down on the planet. If that wasn’t possible for any reason, the Marines were to jump from high altitude using parasails. Mills had made the decision to prepare to jump, but had hoped they could land. They had the bulky packs strapped to their chests, with their equipment stuffed into backpacks. They also had face masks and oxygen cylinders. If they had to jump at high altitude, they would need oxygen to breathe.
“Mills,” the pilot shouted, “we have to abort! We haven’t gotten too far into the gravity well that I can’t jump out-”
“No!” Mills barked through the microphone in his face mask. “There’s no aborting this one, missy. The fleet and Marines are coming in behind us and they need to know what the hell they’ll be facing here. We either make it or we die trying. Got that?”
The pilot muttered a string of curses as she and the copilot fought to get the courier into the atmosphere. If they could make it that far, the Kreelan destroyers wouldn’t be able to follow them, as the sensors suggested that these particular ships weren’t designed to operate in the atmosphere.
The courier lurched. Then it began to roll, the arc of the planet below spinning in the forward view screen. Mills felt a wave of nausea as his inner ear went crazy. The gravity compensators were failing.
The pilot shouted something just before everything went to hell. There was an explosion at the rear of the main cabin that sent shards of metal and plastic flying, but the screams of the men and women of his team were drowned out by the roar of the ship’s air streaming through the hole punched into the engineering section by a Kreelan shell.
The explosion had weakened part of the hull wall, and the seat of Staff Sergeant Rajesh Desai, the team’s heavy weapons specialist, tore loose. Still strapped to his seat, the NCO tumbled through the cabin, screaming. His screams were cut off as he slammed into the torn metal in the aft bulkhead. Mills watched in horror as the man was pinned there for a moment, then in a spray of blood was blown out through the hole, which was much smaller than Desai.
The ship was wallowing in the atmosphere now as the pilots fought the controls, and the only thing that kept them alive were the shields. If those failed, they would burn up in an instant.
“Is anyone injured?” Mills bellowed through the face mask comm system. “Sound off!”
“Ephraim is gone.” Valentina spoke loud enough to be heard through the scream of the air still streaming out, but her voice was completely calm.
Mills turned to look to where Jeremy Ephraim sat. The upper half of the man’s body had been torn to ribbons by shrapnel from the shell hit. “Bloody hell. Anybody else hit?”
He received a brief volley of no’s from Valentina, Steph, Ella Stallick, and Danielson.
“Mills!” the pilot shouted. While the air had by now vented out, the cabin was filled with the whistling roar of the atmosphere through which the co
urier was now tumbling, out of control. “You have to jump!”
“Are you off your nut?” Mills shouted back, his mask fogging up slightly as he did. “We’re not even close to our release altitude! We’ll burn up out there!”
“We’re through the worst of it! We redlined our descent, using the shields as a brake. We’re high but not too fast now. You don’t have any choice! If you don’t jump now, you-”
The pilot’s words were brutally cut off by a brace of Kreelan shells that blew the nose from the courier. Mills stared in horror as the entire forward part of the ship sheared away, the pilot and copilot carried with it. He could hear the pilot screaming as she fell, her voice echoing in his earphones from the comm system, when he looked up to find Valentina in front of him, clinging to his chair.
“Come on! We’ve got to go! Now!”
Fighting against the roller coaster motion of the courier’s hulk, Mills pushed away his fear and focused on what had to be done.
Taking hold of a nearby conduit running along the wall, he unstrapped himself with his free hand and got to his feet. Stallick and Danielson followed his example, but Steph was still in her chair, struggling with her seat harness.
“Go on!” Mills shouted at Valentina and the others. “Get out! I’ll help her!”
“No!” Valentina grabbed his arm. “I’ll get her. You get the others and the weapons!”
Mills didn’t argue. He understood Valentina’s intent. He was the mission leader, and the mission was the most important thing. Everything else was secondary, and he didn’t have the luxury now for any heroics.
“Stallick! Danielson! Get one ammo and both supply containers!” Aside from their personal weapons and other gear that was on each Marine’s weapons harness, the team’s equipment was in a set of containers that had their own parachutes. Mills would have liked to take everything, but having enough to eat and at least some ammunition were the top priorities.
The two Marines nodded. Fighting the tumbling motion of the courier, they began to unstrap the containers from the deck.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 92