In Her Name: The Last War

by Michael R. Hicks

  Shoving that thought aside, he checked his chronometer. A little less than six hours were left until the fleet jumped in. There wasn’t much time. He needed to let Valentina and Steph know he was here, but had no idea how to do it.

  Watching through the scope, he saw them return to the shelter from where they had run to the fence. He had a much clearer view now, because almost everyone else in the camp had moved toward the back of the enclosure, closer to him. Valentina was talking to the black man, and Steph leaned down and picked up her helmet. He saw her detach something that looked like a set of eyeglasses and put them on. Then she went to stand a bit behind Valentina, and Allison came up to hold her hand.

  She put her vidcam gear back on, Mills realized.

  An idea was forming at the back of his brain, but it didn’t gel until he pulled his eye away from the big rifle’s scope. One of the controls on the tiny panel was for a laser designator that was normally used to provide the exact range to the target. It could also be used to direct guided rounds fired from the rifle or larger weapons from another platform. Unfortunately, it was one of the technologies that the Kreelans frequently nulled out in battle through whatever mysterious means they used.

  Mills turned it on, and in the scope an indicator lit up. He put the crosshairs on the head of one of the warriors guarding the camp pulled the trigger back just enough to activate the laser.

  The display read 187 meters. The laser was working.

  The only trick was that it was completely invisible to the unaided eye.

  But Steph’s eyes weren’t unaided. She was looking at the world through the artificially enhanced view of her vidcam display.

  * * *

  “Good God.” Steph looked toward the commotion coming from the Kreelans gathered around the arenas. She couldn’t see anything, for the complex was masked by trees and the buildings on this side of the town square, but she could hear them. Her flesh crawled at the roar of what must be thousands of alien voices.

  She felt a small hand take hold of hers, squeezing it tightly. Allison. Her eyes were wide and her face stricken with fear. She had been strong, incredibly strong for someone her age, but she was smart enough to know what awaited them down the dirt path that led from the gates. And she knew that her special relationship with the warrior leader wouldn’t spare her.

  “Don’t worry, honey.” Steph had to raise her voice to be heard above the din. Her vidcam was running now, and she planned to just leave it on to record whatever was to come. She would never get the chance to edit it or be able to tell the story of the people here, but with a little luck perhaps the Marines who landed would eventually find it.

  She thought of Ichiro and wished more than anything that she could speak to him one last time, just to tell him how much she still loved him. She bit her tongue to take her mind away from the tears she felt welling up in her eyes. “We’ll be all right.” She squeezed Allison’s hand. “I promise.”

  Allison nodded in jerky movements, and her face twitched in an attempt at a smile, but that was all. She accepted Steph’s words for what they were, a comforting lie.

  Looking up again as the sound of the alien voices peaked, movement on Valentina’s back caught her eye. She was standing just ahead of Steph, and at first Steph thought it was some sort of insect.

  Then she realized it couldn’t be. It was a small, bright green dot, and it pulsed rhythmically as it moved up and down Valentina’s spine.

  “What the...” She flipped up the tiny visor that projected an enhanced view of the scene she was recording.

  The mysterious dot vanished.

  Flipping the vidcam visor back down, the dot reappeared. Now, instead of moving up and down Valentina’s spine, the dot was moving slowly from one of her buttocks to the other, pulsing on and off, on and off.

  “Oh, my God.” Turning around, she looked across the mass of people crushed into the back of the compound, trying to avoid being the next ones to be taken to the arenas.

  At first she saw nothing, and then there it was. A bright flash, aimed at her now, coming from somewhere in the woods. “Mills?” Then, realizing that whoever it was couldn’t hear her, she said his name again, over-emphasizing the movement of her lips and tongue.

  Two flashes.

  “You’re alive?”

  Again, two flashes.

  “Blink once.”

  One flash.

  “Valentina!” Steph said, a surge of joy and adrenaline shooting through her system as she stepped backward and reached for the other woman, not wanting to lose sight of the spot in the forest where Mills was hiding. “Valentina!”

  “What is it?” Valentina was beside her.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Steph snatched off her vidcam and carefully placed it on Valentina’s head, “but Mills is alive!”

  She stepped behind Valentina and gently turned her head toward the spot in the woods. Steph didn’t want to draw unwanted attention from the warriors who were still working in a frenzy throughout the camp by simply pointing.

  “Steph, you know as well as I do that he’s gone.” Valentina’s voice was wooden with pent-up grief, but she was enough of a realist to know that Mills was dead. She thought Steph had gone off the deep end, even as Steph’s hands guided her to look toward the woods. “He couldn’t have...”

  She stopped, her mouth hanging open as she stood still, staring.

  “Do you see it?”

  “Yes.” A smile lit up Valentina’s face as she watched the merrily blinking light coming from the woods. “Oh, God, yes! He must be using the laser designator on my rifle!”

  “What is it?” Jackson was looking in the direction that the two women were looking, but couldn’t see anything.

  “Our team leader.” Steph leaned over to speak closer to his ear over the tumult from the arenas. “We were sure he was dead, but he’s alive!”

  “Thank God.” Valentina began to play a game of twenty questions with Mills, who could only answer “yes” or “no.”

  * * *

  Mills gritted his teeth in frustration, wishing that they had a better way of communicating, that he could tell Valentina what he needed to say. He had once heard of an ancient communications code, Morse, he thought it was, that would have worked well for this situation, but neither he nor Valentina knew it. So he had to be content with Valentina mouthing questions in hopes that he could lip-read what she was saying, then he would answer yes or no, two pulses of the laser or one.

  Valentina immediately realized that he wasn’t there just to let them know he was alive, but that he had a plan to help get them out. After what had seemed like forever, but had only taken about five minutes, she had figured out what he had in mind.

  “Beautiful and brilliant.” He grinned as Valentina blew him a kiss before turning to Steph and the black man, who had the look about him of someone who’d been in the military, and began to tell them what she’d learned.

  Steph made her pause for a moment, then took the vidcam gear from Valentina and put it on Allison. Then she aimed Allison’s gaze toward Mills, and he shot her a few blinks with the laser.

  The girl put her hands to her face and burst into tears. But when she took her hands away a moment later, he could see that they were tears of joy, and her mouth kept forming his name.

  Then Steph took the vidcam gear from Allison and put it back on herself. She gave Mills the thumbs-up sign as Allison gathered the other children around her and began to tell them what was happening, her hands gesticulating wildly. All of them turned to look toward the woods. Toward him.

  “Hang in there, sweeties.” Mills prayed the fleet would be on time, and that he could contact them. “Just a few more hours.”

  * * *

  “We’ve got to make sure everyone knows,” Valentina told Jackson. “Mills thinks that when the fleet arrives, the Kreelans will be distracted. When that happens, he’s going to try to contact the fleet to let them know where we are. That’s his first priority.
Then he’s going to take down as many of the warriors along the back fence as he can.”

  “Then we make a break for it,” Jackson finished for her. He looked around at the people who were still crowded fearfully at the back of the compound. “I don’t know how far we’ll get with this many warriors guarding us, but it’s better than being slaughtered like cattle.”

  As he spoke, there was a sudden spike in the volume of the nearby Kreelans watching the arenas. Then the huge gong sounded again, and the warriors instantly fell silent.

  “Uh-oh.” Steph wasn’t sure what the silence meant, but doubted it was anything good.

  “Get the children back.” Valentina took Allison’s hand and pulled her toward the rear of the enclosure. As she approached the people at the edge of the crowd, she shouted, “Let the children move to the back!”

  “Go to hell.” A well-muscled man who stood a head taller than Valentina gave her the finger.

  She stepped closer, still holding Allison’s hand, and stabbed her free hand, flattened like a blade, into his throat in a lightning-fast thrust. It was a blow that could easily have killed him, but she only intended to make a point. Literally. He collapsed to the ground, gagging. “Let the children through!” “Now!”

  Those nearby, many of whom looked at the man with undisguised contempt, stepped aside and offered welcoming hands to help the children.

  “No!” Allison begged as Valentina tried to guide her after the younger children. “I want to stay with you!”

  “Allison,” Valentina told her, kneeling down to look Allison in the eyes, “you can’t. What I have to do now...”

  “Look!” Steph pointed toward the gate. Everyone looked up.

  The warriors who had taken the people earlier had returned. To everyone’s shock, one of the men who’d been taken in the first group was with them. He was bloody and battered, but alive.

  The gates opened, and they marched in, stopping just inside. One of them motioned for the man to continue inside, and as one the warriors bowed their heads as he moved through their ranks and into the relative freedom of the compound.

  The warriors remained where they were.

  Valentina waited to make sure the warriors weren’t going to rush forward to seize more victims before she ran to where the man collapsed under the nearest shelter. Steph and Jackson were right behind her. As was Allison.

  The rest of the crowd hung back, still fearful of being taken by the warriors.

  “What happened?” Valentina asked the man, who was slim and wiry, his head clean-shaven. Steph rushed over from where she had grabbed a container of water in another shelter and handed it to the man, who drank from it greedily.

  “They made us fight,” he explained after chugging down half the water. He had a gash in his scalp and a set of puncture wounds in his left side. Valentina pulled out her medical kit and began applying an antibacterial salve to the wounds as he went on, “It’s one on one, to the death. No point in trying to run. If you don’t fight, they just kill you and bring up someone else.”

  “What style of combat are they using?” Jackson asked grimly.

  The man laughed. “You choose your own poison, Swords, knives. Other stuff I don’t have a name for. Just hands and feet if you like, I suppose. But no guns or anything like that.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I used a knife.” He grinned. “That’s what I was in for.”

  “What do you mean?” Valentina asked.

  “Prison. I was in for murder. Stabbed a guy. Did the same thing to that warrior bitch in the arena, although she put up more of a fight.” He shrugged. “Sort of ironic, huh?”

  “I guess you could say that.” Valentina accepted the cold logic of it. A killer would stand the best chance of surviving against the Kreelans. In this war there wasn’t much of a distinction between killers such as Mills and herself, and a murderer such as this man. Their fight was for more than morality or justice, it was for the survival of the human race. “I can’t say that you’ve atoned for your sins, my friend,” she said as she finished with the first aid kit, “but it certainly didn’t hurt.”

  “They’re waiting.” Steph eyed the warriors, who stared back. The leader stepped forward, a hand on the handle of her sword.

  Valentina stood up and looked at them, then at the mass of people muttering nervously behind her. She held up her hand to the warriors, hoping they’d understand, before moving close enough to the crowd that they could hear her.

  “I need volunteers,” she shouted. “People who can fight hand to hand. The fleet will arrive in a few hours, and we’ve got to buy some time. If you fight and win,” she gestured toward the former inmate who gave them a wave, “you’ll get to live.” At least for a while, she thought darkly, doubting that the Kreelans would simply let go any survivors. “If we don’t choose to fight, they’ll choose for us!”

  A young man, deeply tanned and with shoulders as broad as Mills, stepped forward. Then two more. A woman moved up from behind the front row. Then more.

  There was hope now, Valentina knew, seeing the determination in their eyes. Most of those who stepped forward had been fighting the Kreelans since the invasion began.

  Valentina took the first nineteen volunteers, then turned and strode toward the warriors, pausing momentarily to talk to Steph. “Get as many of the others as you can organized into groups of twenty for when the warriors come back.” Looking at the survivor of the first round, she added, “Hopefully we’ll do a bit better than one out of twenty.”

  “God, Valentina,” Steph said, squeezing Valentina’s hand. “Be careful.”

  “Don’t go.” Allison threw her arms around Valentina. “Please.”

  Valentina gently pushed Allison away and put a hand on the girl’s cheek. “This is the only way we have any control over this. And I have no intention of dying. Not today.”

  She leaned forward and kissed Allison on the forehead. Then she turned and looked toward the woods where Mills lay hidden.

  “I’ll be back.” She waved at him before turning away and leading the others to where the Kreelans stood waiting.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Ku’ar-Marekh watched as the next group of humans was brought forth. She noted that the female human warrior, the one who was of special interest to her, was in this group.

  She was pleased, or as close to being so as her empty heart allowed. Ku’ar-Marekh also saw that this group of humans, led by the dark-haired female, whose gaze was fixed on Ku’ar-Marekh, walked with heads held high, clearly proud and showing no fear. They carried themselves like warriors, come to do battle, and were not mere beasts waiting to be slaughtered like most of the animals in the first group.

  Around the arenas, the gathered warriors who awaited their turn to fight the humans were quiet in respect, curious as to how this group of opponents would fare.

  Warriors gestured for the humans to divide into five groups of four and guided them to the arenas, with the dark-haired female stepping forward onto the sands of the central one. She barely took her eyes from Ku’ar-Marekh.

  The first challengers of each of the other groups moved into the other arenas to face the warriors who awaited them on the bloodied sands.

  While the priestess could have taken this challenge for herself, a junior warrior had already been chosen by the lottery, and Ku’ar-Marekh would not dishonor her by claiming first right of combat.

  Instead, she watched with cold eyes as the warrior, Ayan-Ye’eln, strode toward the human, then gestured toward the table where the weapons were arrayed.

  The human glanced at the table, then turned to face the young warrior. Shaking her head in a gesture Ku’ar-Marekh had come to understand as a sign of negation, she raised her hands toward Ayan-Ye’eln, then clenched them into fists.

  Tooth and claw.

  Interesting, Ku’ar-Marekh thought to herself as Ayan-Ye’eln, understanding the human’s intent, bowed her head in acceptance.

  With a brief glanc
e at Ku’ar-Marekh, the young warrior began to remove her armor, placing it carefully on the table beside the weapons arrayed there. In a moment she wore only the black garment that formed the under-layer for the armor.

  She strode back to her place near the dais, then turned toward the human, flexing her hands, her black talons glittering in the sun.

  The greater honor is yours, child, Ku’ar-Marekh thought approvingly. Ayan-Ye’eln was trying to even the odds for the human as best she could by removing her armor, something that was never demanded by tradition.

  The human moved forward, coming to stand a few paces away from Ayan-Ye’eln, but her attention remained on Ku’ar-Marekh.

  The priestess returned the human’s gaze as she again raised her arms, signaling her warriors to kneel and render their salutes.

  Then Ku’ar-Marekh once more spoke the words that preceded every Challenge.

  “As it has been,” she said, her voice carrying across the five arenas and the Kalai-Il, “and so shall it always be, let the Challenge begin.”

  “In Her Name,” the warriors echoed once more, excitement plain in their voices, “let it be so.”

  * * *

  Valentina listened as the lead warrior on the dais at the center of the arena spoke, then the other warriors answered in unison.

  As they finished speaking, the huge gong sounded again and the warriors rose to their feet.

  Unlike with the first group of human victims, when the Kreelans had immediately broken out in a huge uproar at the sound of the gong, this time they remained quiet.

  They know we’re different, Valentina thought, sensing their curious anticipation. We’re not lambs to the slaughter. Not this time.

  The warrior opposing her turned side-on with one hand extended forward and the other back, both with fingers spread. Her nails, vaguely similar to the claws of a bird of prey like an eagle that Valentina had seen once on Earth, glistened, and Valentina knew they were incredibly sharp.