“What about all the warriors guarding us?” Someone asked.
“The diversion will take care of some of them. We just have to take our chances with the rest.”
“Steph!” Valentina called. “The warriors are coming back!”
With Allison right behind her, Steph ran back to where Valentina and Jackson stood. The warriors marched back through the gates, but this time there were only three survivors. One of them was so badly injured that the other two had to carry him.
Jackson took the weight of the injured man, with Allison wrapping her thin arm around the man’s waist to help, while Steph and Valentina helped the other two, a man and a woman.
“It was a slaughter.” The woman was gasping, and there was a deep cut in her side. “Most of the others were finished in a few minutes. God, that hurts.”
“I know it hurts,” Steph told her, “but you’d better be ready to run. The fleet should be here any minute, and Marines out in the woods are going to start a diversion to help get us out of here.”
“Don’t worry.” The woman managed a smile that quickly turned to a grimace. “You’ll have to run fast to catch up to me.”
Valentina helped the other survivor, a man whose leg had a long gash but was otherwise uninjured, to one of the shelters. She looked back at the warriors, and could tell that something was different. Their demeanor had changed, as if they were agitated.
I wonder if they know something. Several of them glanced up at the sky, and she looked up herself just in time to see four miniature suns ignite, low on the western horizon.
The crowd of people murmured behind her. They, too, had seen the flashes.
“They’re here, by God!” Jackson shouted. “Somebody in low orbit just bought it.”
“The warriors!” Allison cried as the aliens began to move farther into the camp, toward the crowd of people.
Valentina, with Jackson and Steph beside her, moved forward to try and intervene. The Kreelans didn’t threaten them with lethal weapons, but the leader and several others pulled out the stun batons they had used to take them captive.
“Damn.” Jackson pulled Valentina and Steph back. They couldn’t afford to be stunned and helpless. Not now.
The warriors were just moving past them to take the next group of victims when the forest along the rear fence of the camp was ripped apart by a series of explosions.
* * *
Mills watched in satisfaction as the grenades detonated, tearing through the line of warriors guarding the rear of the camp. He hadn’t actually expected many of the warriors to be killed or wounded, but at least half of them went down under a hail of shrapnel and wood splinters.
He cringed as some of the people lining the fence went down, too, screaming as they were cut and slashed.
There was nothing he could do for them now, and he shifted his attention to the warriors who had come for more victims, and who now were momentarily dazed by his little diversion.
Centering the crosshairs right between the breasts of the leading warrior, he stroked the big rifle’s trigger. It fired with a deafening crack, jolting him back with the massive recoil. When he adjusted his aim to where the warrior had been standing, what was left of her body below the midriff was just collapsing to the ground. The rest of her was gone.
He didn’t celebrate the shot, but took aim on a line of three warriors, swords drawn, who were running straight at the civilians.
He fired. Two of them went down and the third spun off to the side, all victims of the same shot.
The people along the fence recovered from the shock of the explosions and, following the instructions that Steph and Valentina had given them, tore down the fence and began to run.
“Damn.” His sight picture was blocked by the escapees, and he had to take careful aim at the blue-skinned faces working their way toward the mass of civilians.
He fired and fired again, and kept firing until he’d expended the twenty-eight rounds he had for the sniper rifle, dropping at least one enemy warrior with every shot.
After he fired the last round, he looked through the scope, desperately hoping to see Valentina.
He shook his head in wonder when he found her. Covered in the blood of the enemy, she was wielding a sword in each hand, battling the few warriors who remained standing. Even in that brief moment, he saw other people taking up the weapons of now-dead warriors and joining her, hacking and slashing at the warriors.
Tossing the now-useless sniper rifle to the side, Mills grabbed up his assault rifle and charged forward to help them.
* * *
“Now!” Valentina screamed at the top of her lungs to the other prisoners after the booms of the grenades had faded. “Take down the fence and run for it!”
The people along the fence who hadn’t been badly hurt by shrapnel from the grenades reacted instantly, tearing the fence apart and running headlong into the woods.
Valentina was just about to go after the leader of the warriors who had come for the next victims, and who was leading her cohorts after the defenseless civilians, when the Kreelan’s upper body simply exploded, covering Valentina with blood and gore.
Ignoring the blood bath, she snatched the sword from the warrior’s hand as the severed arm fell. Then she pirouetted, driving the blade into the belly of another warrior who was charging past her.
Taking that warrior’s sword, as well, she turned, ready to fight. For a moment she had no targets, for the warriors in the camp were systematically being cut down by the sniper fire coming from the woods.
You’re almost as good as me, Mills, she thought with a blood-stained smile as one of the few surviving warriors charged her, bellowing a challenge.
Valentina blocked the warrior’s overhand cut with an upward block with her left sword before cutting deep into the warrior’s thigh with the sword held in her right hand. The warrior went down, and Valentina finished her with a quick stab to the throat.
Jackson was at her side, a sword in his hands, followed by Steph, who held her own captured weapon.
More people armed themselves and joined them, trying to fend off the warriors who swarmed around from the sides of the enclosure to cut off the retreat of the civilians.
Steph watched in horror as the children Allison had saved, every one of them, burst from the stampede of people, heading right toward her and Valentina.
“No!” Steph cried as a group of Kreelans broke through and charged right toward the children. They screamed in terror as the swords flashed down in deadly arcs.
The blades never touched their intended victims. A burst of fire from an assault rifle hammered the warriors backward, revealing the grimy and exhausted form of Roland Mills.
“Good to see you again, girls.” He flashed a bright smile as his eyes continued sweeping the area for nearby threats.
“Mills!” A chorus of young voices sounded above the bedlam of the escaping prisoners as the children clustered around the big Marine, as if he were a rock in the middle of a raging river.
“When we get out of this,” Valentina said, pausing as Mills blasted a pair of warriors who were getting too close, “I’m going to take you and-”
“Where’s Allison?” Steph asked. “She was right next to me!”
All of them looked around, trying to spot the girl in the chaos swirling around them.
“There she is!” Jackson said, pointing.
There was Allison, about twenty meters away, helping a young man who was bleeding badly from his side, the victim of one of the Kreelan flying weapons.
“Allison!” Steph shouted, sprinting toward her.
“Steph, wait!” Mills cried, catching sight of more warriors who had come through the woods and were now vaulting the fence into the camp. “Christ!” Taking careful aim, he fired past Steph, Allison, and the injured man, who were right in between him and the oncoming warriors.
Jackson ran over and relieved Allison of her burden, putting the injured man’s arm across his shoulder and
his own arm around the man’s waist.
Allison had just turned toward Steph, reaching out her hand, when the injured man and Jackson both cried out and pitched forward to the ground. The injured man was now dead, a Kreelan flying weapon embedded in his spinal column. Jackson had one of the weapons protruding from his lower back, but managed to get to his feet using the sword as a crutch, a grimace of agony on his face.
“Run!” Steph screamed, shoving Allison ahead of her, shielding the girl with her body as more of the flying weapons hissed toward them.
Steph’s left leg collapsed under her. As she fell to the ground, she could see a deep line of scarlet across her leg where one of the weapons had cut deep into her thigh. She didn’t feel any pain yet, so sharp was the blade.
Looking up, she saw Allison stop and turn back toward her. “No, Allison! Run!”
Then she fainted.
Without a thought, Allison ran back to her, falling to her knees and catching Steph by the shoulders as she slumped to the ground.
“Allison!” Mills shouted. “Get out of there! Run!”
With an agonized look on her face, Allison shook her head as she cradled Steph, trying to hold the unconscious woman’s head and shoulders out of the churned-up soil. “I can’t leave her!”
“Oh, God.” Mills saw warriors pouring through the gates from the direction of the arenas. A number of Jackson’s people tried to fight them off, but there were too many. He fired his assault rifle into the mass of aliens as Valentina ran forward to help Jackson. She tossed him over her shoulder as if he were a young child and ran back to Mills while he held the Kreelans at bay.
“Take him!” She quickly set the groaning Jackson on his feet next to Mills, who wrapped a powerful arm around Jackson’s waist as he fired the assault rifle with his other hand.
Then the rifle’s magazine ran out.
“Shit!” Mills looked helplessly at Valentina. “That was all the ammo!”
“Put me down,” Jackson wheezed. “Put me down, dammit.”
The children, who looked around wide-eyed at the cataclysm unfolding around them, made room as Mills set Jackson down.
“Grenade.” Jackson held out his hands.
“Aye, mate.” Mills snatched the last grenade from his combat belt and handed it to Jackson. His eyes met the other man’s and held them for a long moment.
“Now get these kids out of here.” Jackson gave Mills a bloody smile as he popped the safety cap off the grenade.
“He’s right.” Valentina had to shout in Mills’s ear, as her voice was drowned out by the sonic booms of assault boats from the fleet. “You’ve got to get the children to safety.”
“No!” Mills stared at her, his heart hammering with dread. The only other woman he’d ever loved had died in front of his eyes at the hands of one of these alien beasts, and he wasn’t about to let it happen again. “I am not leaving you behind!”
“We don’t have time.” She pulled him down and kissed him hard on the mouth. Pulling away, she said, “I’ll see you on that beach someday, Mills.”
Then she was gone. Sprinting inhumanly fast, she ran to protect Steph and Allison just as they were about to be overrun. The blades of her crimson-stained swords caught the afternoon sun as a tide of howling warriors swarmed over them.
His heart a cold, dead stone in his chest, Mills gathered up the children and led them away just as Confederation assault boats roared overhead, coming in to land.
* * *
Jackson ignored the agony in his back. He could feel blood pouring from the wound. He’d been hit in the kidney. His vision was fading quickly, but he had time enough.
Warriors had surrounded the women, and more were heading right toward him in pursuit of the fleeing civilians.
Noticing that he was still alive, one of the aliens paused just long enough to raise her sword as the others sped around him.
“Fuck you, bitch.” Jackson smiled as he pressed the detonator with his thumb.
* * *
No other human being could do what Valentina was doing, because none had the special implants that poured adrenaline and other chemicals into her system, speeding up her reaction time, increasing her strength.
She wasn’t invulnerable, and the warriors could have overwhelmed her had they worked together. Instead, they swept around her, Steph, and Allison to form a ring, an arena bounded by warriors, as more continued to chase after the fleeing civilians.
The warriors took turns, seemingly at random, dashing into the makeshift arena to challenge her. One after another they came, and one after another she killed them, her swords whirling, slashing and stabbing as she danced around Allison and Steph, protecting them.
She had no idea how long she had been fighting when they stopped coming at her. Looking up from where her latest victim was collapsing to the ground, she saw that the surrounding warriors were now kneeling.
“Valentina!” Allison was pointing. “It’s her.”
The warrior leader stood a few paces away, somehow having appeared out of thin air. She was staring at Valentina with her silver-flecked, vaguely feline eyes.
Raising her swords, Valentina prepared to fight.
The warrior held out her hands, and the swords were torn from Valentina’s grip, flying as if by magic to the warrior, who deftly caught them. She held them out, and another warrior dashed forward to take them. The warrior leader said something in her language, and eight warriors rose to their feet and came forward.
Valentina tensed, ready for the worst, but none of the aliens drew their weapons. Instead, six came to stand before her, briefly bowing their heads, while the other two knelt next to Steph and carefully lifted her from the ground. The ring of warriors parted as they carried her in the direction of the arenas, and the warrior leader gestured for Valentina to follow.
“Come on.” Valentina held out her blood-covered hand for Allison.
“What are they going to do?” Allison got up and clutched Valentina’s hand, ignoring the blood.
“I think they’re going to let us live. At least for now.” The two of them followed after the warriors who carried Steph, and the six other warriors fell in behind them.
Valentina glanced back as she heard the rumble of hover engines from the assault boats in the fields beyond the woods.
The warrior leader was staring off in the same direction as another warrior came up and began to speak to her.
* * *
“My priestess.” Esah-Kuran bowed her head and saluted, raising her left fist to her right breast. “The humans land in force around us. We await your command.”
Ku’ar-Marekh knew this, of course, for beyond the obvious senses of sight and sound that told her of the human craft landing their warriors, her mind’s eye had cast about them, seeing all there was to see, knowing all there was to know.
She saw the many warriors and the great metal machines that were such treasured prey for her warriors descend from the landing craft, even as the tide of humans who had escaped from the pen began to reach them.
“Make sure these humans,” she gestured to where the three had been taken to the Kalai-Il, “are well-kept until I return.”
Then she closed her eyes and opened her mind to the Bloodsong so that her warriors would know her will.
* * *
“Marines!” Mills ran through the field from the woods, panting as he carried two of the younger children, one in each arm.
He had reached the Marines’ defensive positions around the landing zone. The empty fields he had crossed the night before were now a beehive of activity as dozens of assault boats disgorged Marines, tanks, and other vehicles and equipment that were part of the 10th Armored Division. Hundreds of Marines were trying to gather up the panicked civilians and get them into boats that were empty of their cargos and ready to return to the carriers.
He was surrounded by Marines offering helping hands, gently taking the children and leading them to a nearby boat.
“First
Sergeant Mills.” One of the Marines recognized Mills’s rank insignia and his name patch and had called it in. “General Sparks wants to see you ASAP.”
“Where is he?”
“There, sir.” The Marine pointed to a massive M-90 Wolverine tank about a hundred meters away that had a pennant waving wildly from a mast on the turret. “Just look for the guy wearing the biggest damn pistol you ever saw.”
“I know him.” Mills started off, but paused as a hand gripped his.
It was Vanhi, one of Allison’s friends.
“Thank you, Mr. Mills.” Then she hugged him. He returned it, biting back the urge to burst into tears.
“Get on the boat, young lady.”
She nodded, then turned and went with the boat’s loadmaster.
Running to where Sparks’s Wolverine squatted on the field, Mills climbed up the track skirt onto the engine deck, then onto the turret.
Sparks was kneeling on the turret roof, surrounded by his staff officers and the commanders of the 32nd Armored Brigade, the first unit to hit dirt.
“Mills.” The general’s intense blue eyes glittered in the sunlight. “You did a damn fine job. A damn fine job!”
“Thank you, sir.” Mills bobbed his head in acknowledgement as he tried to bring his breathing under control.
Sparks held up a display pad that showed a large red swath, like an intense thunderstorm on radar, that circled most of the way around the town of Breakwater, with a large red patch right in the middle of the town. “This is a thermal plot we got of the enemy from orbit. Does this match up with what you’ve seen on the ground?” With the Kreelans interfering with human technology, seemingly at will, Sparks had very little trust in what any electronic sensors told him.
“Yes, sir.” Mills pointed to a spot on the screen where the red was particularly intense. “They built some sort of temple or something in the town square, along with arenas where they were making the civilians fight them. And in the woods around the town there are thousands of warriors.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to know how many, sir, but I’d say at least five thousand. Maybe more.”
In Her Name: The Last War Page 102