Sato watched the last red icon representing a Kreelan warship blink and disappear from the tactical display as Orion’s final salvo echoed in the flag bridge. No Kreelan warships were left in the entire system, only tumbling heaps of metal and frozen bodies that even now clanged off of the battleship’s armor as she changed course, Thunderer still alongside, to rendezvous with their twin sisters.
“Yes, we did.” Sato’s voice held an air of satisfaction mixed with sorrow. The Confederation had won the battle and the new battleships had certainly proved their mettle. But the cost had been high. Eight cruisers and thirteen destroyers had been lost, most with all hands.
“Sir,” the communications officer called, “incoming from Admiral Voroshilov.”
“On the main display, if you please.”
The Saint Petersburg admiral’s bearded face appeared on the forward viewer. “My congratulations on a battle well fought and won, Commodore Sato.”
“Thank you, sir.” Sato bowed his head, wincing as he looked back up.
“You are injured, commodore?”
“Minor burns, admiral.” Sato gestured with his left arm, where the sleeve was still smoking and his left hand was heavily bandaged. An electrical fire had broken out on one of the command consoles, seriously injuring his engineering officer. Sato had dragged her away and batted out the flames covering the woman’s upper body with his hands while other members of the flag bridge crew extinguished the fire. His hand was covered with second degree burns, but he barely felt it now after the surgeon had injected him with painkillers. “It’s nothing, sir. We’ve lost far more.”
“Which brings me to the next question, commodore. What is the status of your ships?”
“Monarch and Conqueror suffered only minor damage and no casualties, and remain fully combat capable. I’ve ordered them to rendezvous with the munitions ships to rearm. That should take roughly four hours.”
Voroshilov nodded. “Very good. Go on, please.”
“Thunderer suffered moderate damage. Half of her main batteries are out of action and she’s lost her secondary sensor array. She’s also very low on ammunition. I’ve ordered her to detach and head for the resupply ships as soon as Monarch and Conqueror are finished. As for casualties, she suffered twelve dead and fifteen wounded, sir.”
“And your flagship, commodore?”
Sato’s expression hardened. “Orion is no longer fit for combat, admiral.” Those words hurt him, but he was buoyed by the knowledge that at least Orion had survived. “Two of our main batteries are out of action, along with half our secondaries and point defense lasers. The armor along the starboard side has been compromised, and the hull has been breached in five places. Damage control parties have contained the damage and are shoring up the hull around the breached sections.
“Casualties…” Sato paused, thinking of the smoking wreckage that was all that was left of the ship’s bridge, and the silent vacuum-filled tomb of engine room number three. “Casualties were high, sir. We lost eighty-seven members of the crew, including Captain Semyonova and the other personnel on the ship’s bridge. My condolences, sir.”
Voroshilov closed his eyes for a moment. Semyonova had served under him while they were in the Saint Petersburg Navy. “Thank you, commodore.”
“Admiral, if I may ask, what’s happening on the ground? I know that Monarch and Conqueror conducted a direct fire bombardment, but we haven’t heard what happened.”
“Absolutely nothing happened, commodore.” Voroshilov’s mouth twisted as if he were about to spit. “The shells did not detonate. Tracking indicated they were precisely on-target. But optical sensors showed them simply…stopping, and falling toward the surface.”
“Impossible,” Sato breathed, knowing even as he said it that it that anything seemed to be possible for the Kreelans. He knew that better than anyone.
“Yes, just like neutralizing radioactive isotopes as they did during our battle at Saint Petersburg. Impossible. Yet it happened.”
“And there’s been no word from General Sparks?”
“None since just after the bombardment commenced.”
No one else on the flag bridge would have caught it, but Sato had worked long enough with Voroshilov that he could tell the admiral was worried.
“The combat zone has become obscured and we have lost all contact with the general and his Marines.”
* * *
With a cry of agony, Ku’ar-Marekh collapsed.
Selan-Kulir, her body tingling from the power of the priestess’s Bloodsong, still had the presence of mind to grab hold of the priestess’s armor and help to ease her fall.
“My priestess?”
Ku’ar-Marekh stared at the eerily darkened sky as the shield she had woven began to rapidly disperse. Blood now ran freely from her nose and eyes. She coughed, and droplets of blood sprayed from her lips. The pain in her body was nearly as bad as the fire that had engulfed her during the Change when she had become a priestess.
“I will get you to a healer.” Selan-Kulir closed her eyes to focus her need through the Bloodsong, but felt Ku’ar-Marekh’s hand take her wrist.
“No, child. There is no need.”
“But…”
Ku’ar-Marekh shook her head. “There is no need.” Gently pushing the young warrior’s hands aside, she managed to get to her feet.
Selan-Kulir stood close beside her, uncertain. She forced herself to keep her hands at her sides as her priestess swayed on her feet.
“The battle is again an honorable one.” Ku’ar-Marekh could see her warriors charging the humans that surrounded them. The humans still held a decisive advantage if they could recover in time, but her warriors would no longer be slaughtered like meat animals with no chance for glory.
The two stood there, alone among the screaming wounded and the silent dead, the smoke from the destroyed ships and vehicles again wafting across the field of battle.
Above, the sky began to clear. Ku’ar-Marekh cast her second sight upward to the human ships, and quickly saw that their weapons were no longer prepared to bombard her warriors, for they were too close now to their human opponents.
In the distance, all around them, the howl of the warriors grew as they came within striking distance of the human animals. The sound was slowly punctuated by weapons fire as the humans regained their senses. Their rate of fire picked up quickly, but no one would know until the battle was over if it would be quick enough.
“You will return to the fleet,” Ku’ar-Marekh ordered quietly.
“But, my priestess, what of the battle?” Selan-Kulir could conceal neither her confusion, nor deep disappointment. She had been wounded, yes, but could still wield a sword. “I wish to fight!”
Ku’ar-Marekh turned to her. “And fight you shall, child, but not this day. Our lives are spent easily in war, but do not waste yours. This,” she gestured around them, “will be over before you could reach the battle line, and if the humans win, you will simply die an empty death. I do not wish this, and it brings neither honor to yourself, nor glory to the Empress.”
Selan-Kulir, chastened, bowed her head as Ku’ar-Marekh went on. “You did the Empress great honor by standing by my side this day. The last day…”
She faltered, and Selan-Kulir reached out to steady her.
“…the last day a high priestess of the Nyur-A’il shall walk among Her Children. After me, there shall be no more, for all eternity. You are my last witness, and I wish you to live until you can die with honor. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my priestess.” Selan-Kulir looked up, the skin under her eyes black with mourning for what the Empire was about to lose. Ages before the foundation of the Empire, all of the martial orders had maintained unbroken lines of high priests and priestesses. After the passing of Keel-Tath, there were only priestesses, for the males had been left barely sentient by the Curse.
But the most ancient orders, such as the Nyur-A’il, had fewer and fewer disciples since those ancient days. Tw
o of the orders now had only a single priestess, Tesh-Dar of the Desh-Ka, and Ku’ar-Marekh of the Nyur-A’il.
And this day would see the passage of the Nyur-A’il from history, something that had never happened in all the ages since the first Books of Time.
Holding out her hands, Ku’ar-Marekh took the young warrior’s forearms in a tight grip, the formal greeting, and parting, of warriors. “May thy Way be long and glorious, Selan-Kulir.”
And then she was gone.
* * *
Sparks shook his head, trying to clear his vision. The last thing he remembered was his helmet slamming against the heavy metal frame of the cupola display.
The Wolverine was dark and deathly quiet. All the displays were out. The engine must have died and the power had somehow failed.
“Crew! Status?” He didn’t bother with the intercom, but shouted so his crew could hear him through their helmets.
“Christ, sir, what was that?” The driver was still disoriented.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Sparks snapped. “Can we move or is the tank dead?”
“Hang on, general…” Sparks relaxed slightly at the change in the driver’s tone of voice. He was snapping out of it.
The interior lights snapped back on, and Sparks heard the whine of the starters for the tank’s twin turbine engines.
“Gunner?”
“Sir, primary fire control is off-line, but we’ve still got optical.” He paused, then looked up at Sparks from where he sat, below and ahead of the general. Sparks could have reached out and tapped the man’s helmet with his foot. “Jesus, sir, they’re right on top of us!”
“Hell!” Sparks popped the hatch. Shoving it open, he stuck his head out and looked to their front. His skin crawled at not only the sight, but the blood-curdling screams of thousands of alien warriors who were now less than a hundred meters away. “Do we have radio?”
“Negative, sir.” The driver muttered a curse. He couldn’t move the Wolverine until the turbines had reached operating temperature. It didn’t take long, only a minute, but it was a minute they didn’t have. He could see the cyan glow of lightning grenades held by some of the approaching warriors. He was a veteran of the ongoing campaign against the Kreelans on Saint Petersburg, and knew painfully well what those hellish weapons could do to his vehicle and its crew.
“Guess we’ll have to wake everybody up the old fashioned way.” Sparks manually aimed the gatling gun at the approaching horde. “Open fire!”
The gun spat a solid stream of shells that tore into the front ranks of the warriors, mowing them down by the dozens. Other tanks and fighting vehicles, their crews recovering from the strange phenomenon that had hit them, began firing, as well.
The Wolverine’s main gun spoke, sending a flechette round straight into the Kreelan line. Normally a devastating weapon, the enemy was so close now that it simply punched a deep but narrow hole into the mass of warriors that was quickly filled by more.
“Driver!” Sparks paused momentarily in his firing so he could hear his driver’s response. “Back us up! Fast!”
“The turbines aren’t up yet, sir!”
Sparks cursed as he fired again, sending over a hundred cannon rounds every second into the enemy in a desperate attempt to keep the Kreelans away.
Next to him, the antipersonnel mortar began to fire, sending the small bombs arcing into the alien horde.
The first volley of lightning grenades rose from the approaching warriors, and the tanks on both sides of Sparks were hit. Webs of cyan energy engulfed the weapons as soon as the weapons touched the metal, the flickering tendrils leaving white-hot scars across the armor. The commander of the Wolverine on the left managed to get out. His uniform was on fire, and he only lasted a few seconds before a Kreelan flying weapon cut him down. The other members of his crew and that of the tank on the right were burned alive.
A pair of lightning grenades sailed up from warriors in front of Sparks’s tank just before his gunner blew the Kreelans apart with another round from the main gun.
“Driver!” Sparks gritted his teeth in resignation as he kept on firing, waiting for the lightning to take him.
“Hang on, sir!”
Sparks barely had time to reach out a hand to brace himself after the driver’s warning when the Wolverine lurched in reverse, throwing up a huge geyser of dirt into the faces of the attacking warriors.
“Please, God.” Sparks prayed as he watched the two grenades arcing down toward them. He mashed down the trigger again, blasting more warriors into oblivion.
One of the grenades missed completely, sending out a flurry of lightning bolts as it hit the ground.
The other hit the edge of the glacis plate, the very front armor of the tank.
“Oh, shit.” The driver’s words echoed the thoughts of all three men as the grenade began to arc against the tank’s armor.
But as the metal around it began to melt, the grenade fell away to sizzle harmlessly on the ground.
“Driver, we’re running out of room!” Sparks glanced behind them. The tree line was approaching fast. The woods here were too thick for the tank to drive through without the risk of throwing a track and being immobilized. Right now, mobility was life. “Spin us to the right and get moving forward. We’ll run parallel to their line and pour fire into ‘em!”
“Yes, sir!”
As the driver answered, the Wolverine did exactly as Sparks had wanted, coming to a skidding stop before spinning in place in a perfect turn that lined them up parallel with the approaching aliens.
The gunner turned the turret to the left and began raking the enemy with the tank’s guns. Behind and ahead of him, the other surviving tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were doing the same, following the lead of the Wolverine that flew a red pennant with three gold stars.
Sparks shook his head in grudging admiration at the endurance showed by the alien warriors. Even wearing armor and carrying weapons, they had sprinted almost half a dozen kilometers and were still coming on strong.
“General, we’re going to run out of room.”
Looking to his right, toward the tree line, Sparks saw that the driver was right. They wouldn’t be able to keep far enough away from the Kreelans without going into the woods.
“Just keep firing.” Sparks figured that if he had to die, this was as good a place and as good a way as any for an old cavalry soldier like him.
That’s when he heard a sudden, massive barrage of cannon fire.
Looking up, he saw a line of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles burst over a rise just to the east, in the direction they were heading, every gun hammering at the mass of alien warriors.
“The reserve,” Sparks whispered, relief flooding through him. These were the Marines his logistics officer had brought down farther away from the LZ, and they had been beyond the range of the strange…phenomenon. “Driver, wheel around as they pass and join their line.”
“Yes, sir!”
For the first time, Sparks knew for certain that this battle was theirs. More of his Marines would die before the day was through, but he knew they were going to win.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Mills, Valentina, and Allison watched the strange dark wall consume the battlefield like a sandstorm.
Above, they saw the unmistakable streaks of incoming shells from an orbital bombardment, and clapped their hands over their ears at the deafening sonic booms.
Mills knew the shells were from the new battleships, which had special munitions that Commodore Sato had helped design. Mills had witnessed the gunnery tests over a deserted expanse of Siberia on Earth. The effects on the target area, which had been covered with dummies designed to simulate the alien warriors, had been devastating.
“Come on! Blow them to bloody kingdom come!”
The shells simply stopped in mid-air. He could see the glint of the metal casings, red-hot from reentry, hanging above the target.
Then they simply fell toward the groun
d, out of sight behind the rapidly expanding darkness.
“My God! That’s bloody impossible!”
The dark cloud, whatever it was, swept over the Marine positions surrounding the landing zone.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it began to dissipate.
Taking his hands from his ears, he could hear the voices of the warriors, tens of thousands of them. A mass of black-clad bodies ran through the clearing smoke as they charged the human encirclement.
“Start shooting, you buggers!” Mills bellowed at the top of his lungs.
As if the distant Marines heard him, a gatling gun growled, followed by the heavy crack of a tank’s main gun firing.
In a moment, the battlefield was consumed by weapons fire as the human defenders came alive.
“It’s going to be close,” Valentina said from beside him. Her eyesight was better, and she could see how close the Kreelans really were. The Marines were mowing them down in droves, but the aliens were right on top of them. “If the Marines don’t…”
Right in front of them, she was there. The warrior leader.
“Look at her,” Mills whispered.
The warrior’s face was covered in blood. It ran like tears from her eyes, which themselves were a bright red from burst blood vessels. It dripped from her chin onto the pendants that hung from her collar, then onto her breastplate. Streaks of crimson ran down the bright cyan rune on her armor.
She swayed for just a moment, then steadied herself. She looked at each of them in turn, her gaze lingering on Allison, before she fixed her eyes on Valentina. Then she slowly drew her sword.
Mills began to step forward, but Valentina held out a hand to stop him. “No, Mills. I’ve got this. Keep Allison and Steph safe.”
He wanted to argue, but knew that she was right. He was at the end of his rope physically and could barely stay on his feet. And the only thing he had left as a weapon, besides his massive fists, was his combat knife, although Allison still held onto the sword she’d taken from a dead warrior. “Be bloody careful.”
With that, Valentina moved forward, and the warrior took a few paces back to give them both some room.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 108