In Her Name: The Last War (104 page)

Drawing her sword, she charged their line. With a deafening howl of rage she slaughtered the humans at a pace almost too fast for her terrified sisters to see. It was a gruesome spectacle that none of them had ever seen, or would ever see again. 

When it was over, the human defensive positions were awash with blood. Tesh-Dar herself was painted in crimson, and the coppery smell was lodged so deeply in her senses that she doubted she would ever be rid of it. Yet she was not finished.

Trembling now, her great body on the verge of succumbing to her wounds and the strain for using her powers so intensely, she moved toward the mound of concrete. A short tunnel led her to a massive metal blast door that, she knew from her second sight, was nearly as thick as she was tall.

Baring her fangs in contempt, she brought up her sword, holding it ready as she stepped forward into the door, her body merging with the metal as she crossed through it toward the other side.

* * *

Constellation’s
hull shook as her main batteries fired off yet another salvo at a nearby target that had already been severely damaged by a mine. The Kreelan warships that had jumped into the minefield after them had not fired on the human ships at first, apparently hoping that their boarding parties would be successful in attacking their targets. Fortunately, Voroshilov had accepted Commodore Hanson at her word when she warned him about boarding attacks, and the Saint Petersburg ships joined their Confederation counterparts in diving into the minefield before the Kreelans could close the range.

Looking at the tactical display, Hanson smiled grimly at their conundrum, temporary though it might be: the Kreelan ships either had to pause and pick up their warriors, which would put them at a severe tactical disadvantage, or pursue the human ships with only a skeleton crew aboard, which also worked in the humans’ favor.

For once, she knew, the Kreelans had made a major tactical blunder: some ships stopped to recover their warriors, and others didn’t. It was as if they had suddenly become confused or preoccupied with something she could not even guess at.

Whatever works
, she thought as the Kreelan ship that was
Constellation’s
target exploded. A few seconds later she could hear the debris rattling against her flagship’s hull like metal rain.

“I’m not sure I believe this,” her flag captain said tensely. 

“We’re clobbering them,” she said, hoping the words would not jinx the battle. The tactical display, however, told the story: between the mines, her ships, and Voroshilov’s fleet, the Kreelans were being pounded. They had already lost twenty ships with as many more damaged, for the price of only three destroyers and two cruisers of what she had come to think of as the Combined Fleet.

“Captain Braverman reports that he’s engaging enemy ships coming up from Saint Petersburg orbit,” the flag tactical officer told her. 

“Show me,” she ordered, and a secondary display lit up with a depiction of Braverman’s fight. The Kreelans had a slight advantage in tonnage — all of their eleven ships were heavy cruisers, whereas Braverman had only seven pre-war cruisers and ten destroyers — but her money was on Braverman. 

She watched as he split his destroyer escort into a ring forward of the conical formation of his cruisers, pointed right at the center of the enemy formation. The cruisers began to fire their main batteries on a continuous cycle, and at just the right moment the destroyers ripple-fired their torpedoes so they would reach the Kreelan formation at the same time as the first wave of shells from the cruisers. It was a masterful display of precision gunnery.

It was a massacre. The Kreelan formation’s point defense weapons were saturated with far too many targets at once, the rain of shells allowing more than half of the far more powerful torpedoes to get through to their targets. In less than a minute, all eleven Kreelan ships had either been totally destroyed or were nothing more than flaming hulks that were finished off by the destroyers.

A cheer went up among her staff as
Constellation
fired her own salute, finishing off yet another Kreelan ship.

“Damn,” her flag captain said. 

“I wish every engagement could be like that,” Hanson told him, opening a channel to Braverman. “Captain Braverman,” she said as his image appeared in her vidcom terminal, “that was absolutely superb. My compliments to your captains and crews.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he told her. “I’ll do that. And commodore...” He paused, and Hanson prepared herself for bad news. “Commodore, I’ve sent a cutter to our emergence point where we destroyed several Kreelan ships. I regret to inform you that...” He grimaced before going on, “...that I believe
Yura
was grappled to one of them, and we destroyed her. I’ll submit myself for court-martial as soon as conditions permit.”

Hanson sat up in her chair amid the thunder of another salvo fired from Constellation. “What? Captain,
Yura
was destroyed by a russian nuke when we first arrived,” she told him. “What you fired on was nothing more than a lifeless hulk. In fact, if a Kreelan warship was grappled to her, I would have ordered you to destroy her anyway, to keep her from falling into enemy hands.” She paused to let those words sink in. “There will be no court-martial, captain.”

“That’s...that’s good to know, ma’am,” he said, an expression of relief washing over his face. “But she wasn’t a completely lifeless hulk: there was at least one survivor. We picked up an emergency transponder beacon, we think from a beach ball, and I sent the ship’s cutter to retrieve whoever it is.”

Hanson thought of the radiation the ship must have received, what it must have done to the crew. She doubted the cutter would find anyone alive. “Very well, captain,” she said. “Let me know immediately about any survivors. And now that you’ve cleared out the enemy ships from orbit, how would you like to come up here and join our little party in the minefield?”

“With pleasure, commodore,” he answered with a cold smile.

* * *

Pan’ne-Sharakh was in agony by the time she reached her designated place on the great stairway, the fourth step from the throne. She paused for a moment, turning her mind inward to calm her racing heart and burning lungs. Even more than the warriors, the clawless ones such as she were trained in deep meditation techniques, for control of their minds was essential to carrying out the tasks assigned to their caste, and control of the mind extended to control of the body. It would not keep her ancient muscles from being terribly sore come the morning, but the task at hand made such concerns nothing more than trivialities. 

“Pan’ne-Sharakh,” the Empress called to her softly. 

She opened her eyes to see her sovereign standing on the step above her. Kneeling down in reverence, saluting just as did the warriors, she said, “My Empress, to thee I come for Tesh-Dar’s sake.”

“This I know, my child,” She said. “I have tried to reach out to her, but she does not hear Me.” Her voice lowered. “I fear forcing My will upon her in her present state, for if she raised her hand against Me, I would have no choice but to cast her away her soul.”

The mere thought sent a tremor of fear through Pan’ne-Sharakh. The Empress loved and commanded both the living and the dead. Those who fell from Her grace and were cast into Darkness lived in eternal agony, lost to Her love and light. Tesh-Dar could not be allowed to suffer such a fate.

The Empress took Pan’ne-Sharak’s hands. “Together, perhaps,” She said, “we may bring her back to the Way. She is too important to the future of the Empire to risk her falling into Darkness. I cannot see into the future, yet I know to the depths of My soul that she yet has a great role to play in what time our race has left. But we have not much time: powerful as she is, her body, badly wounded, grows weaker by the moment.”

“Then let us begin, my Empress,” Pan’ne-Sharakh said, firmly clasping her hands, intent on bringing home the daughter of her heart.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

“Okay,” Faraday said nervously, glancing back at Valentina, who still lay comatose in the navigator’s chair, “this is where it might get interesting.” He had flown
Mauritania
away from the spaceport, staying as low as he dared in hopes of avoiding any Kreelan forces that might be lurking in the area before climbing toward orbit. No one had fired on them, but they had seen the destruction of the ships back at the spaceport through the electronic eyes of the ship’s sensors, and he had no wish to have his ship experience a similar fate. He had gotten intermittent locks on ships in orbit, but the Mauritania did not have military grade tactical sensors, and could tell him nothing about whether they were enemy or friendly. “It’s time to head upstairs.”

“Take us up, Faraday,” Grishin told him, now sitting in the copilot’s seat. He avoided looking at Valentina: the sight of her gave him what he knew Mills would have called the heebie-jeebies. The Marines were settled in as well as they could be, with the wounded in the passenger cabins and the rest in the otherwise empty main cargo hold. He hadn’t given Mills any choice about taking over the job of assisting Major Justin in getting things organized: having no idea of where they might wind up at the end of this lunatic caper, Grishin wanted his Marines ready to fight again if need be. What was left of the brigade had to be reorganized, weapons and ammunition redistributed, and the available food and water inventoried. The
Mauritania
could carry them through space, but its food processing capability was far too small to support all of his people. They had to find a refuge, and without any star charts to plot hyperspace jumps — even assuming that Valentina could stand such a strain — there was really only one option: Riga.

Looking out the flight deck’s massive windscreen, Grishin saw the horizon fall away as Faraday brought the ship’s nose up, climbing toward the clouds. 

After only a few seconds, the ship’s sensors displayed two groups of ships in near space above them, heading directly toward one another.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” Faraday muttered as he watched the game play out between the two sets of amber icons on the screen. 

Suddenly the ships of one group, the one higher in space, began to change to blue, with ship data displayed next to each one.

“Hot damn!” Faraday cried. “Those are ours!”

He and Grishin stared as the two groups closed the range, gasping in surprise as the yellow icons representing the eleven Kreelan ships were wiped out.

“Holy shit,” Faraday said, looking at the colonel. “We certainly kicked their asses that time.”

“Indeed,” Grishin said, impressed. “Can you raise them on vidcom?”

“Should be able to,” Faraday said. “They should still be monitoring the merchant GUARD frequency.” He glanced around the ship’s console, finally finding the communications controls. Putting on the headset, he tapped in the frequency he wanted and began calling. “Any Confederation vessel, this is the merchant vessel
Mauritania
, please respond.” He paused, waiting.

He was just about to repeat his call when a clipped voice answered. “
Mauritania
, this is CNS
Southampton
. You are in an active combat zone. Clear this area immediately.”

“Let me talk to them,” Grishin said, and Faraday handed him a headset. “
Southampton
, this is Colonel Grishin, Confederation Marines. I would like to speak to your commanding officer, please.”

There was a pause before another voice came on. “This is Captain Braverman, commanding
Southampton,
” a male voice said. “I take it that you’re aboard the merchant vessel rising toward our formation?”

“Yes, captain,” Grishin replied. “All of our assault boats were destroyed by the Russians, and then the Kreelans tried to finish the job. We had to...borrow an impounded ship to get into space. Unfortunately, we do not have enough provisions aboard to make a hyperlight jump, and our navigation system is, shall we say,” he looked at Valentina’s limp form, “not fully functional. I would be greatly obliged if you could provide an escort to guide us to Riga.”

“I appreciate your situation, colonel,” Braverman said grimly, “but I can’t detach any of my ships right now to provide an escort. We’re moving at flank speed to join Commodore Hanson near Saint Petersburg’s moon to see if we can finish off the Kreelan fleet here.”

“I understand that, captain,” Grishin said, “but I have five hundred and seventy-three men and women aboard. Over one hundred of them are seriously injured. We have no star charts or navigation aids aboard; we are flying blind.” While Riga was in the same system, the ship’s sensors were not designed for survey work: finding a planet in a star system was much easier said than done.

Aboard
Southampton
, Braverman paused, scowling. He could not in good conscience leave Grishin and his people to fend for themselves, but the Kreelans — while taking a serious beating at the hands of Hanson and Voroshilov — were far from finished. He simply could not part with even a single destroyer. 

Then the solution struck him. “Colonel,” he said, “we detached a cutter a short while ago on a SAR mission. I’ll order them to rendezvous with you and guide you to Riga. I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do right now.”

“Thank you, captain,” Grishin said, relieved, “that would be most appreciated.”

“I’ll give the orders immediately,” Braverman told him. “Continue to climb toward our formation and stay on this vector. Your instruments should pick up the cutter soon.”

“Understood, and thank you. Grishin, out.” Taking off the headset, Grishin sat back in his seat, thanking God that Braverman had been able to help them. He had not relished the thought of Mauritania wandering about the system looking for Riga. At least fifteen of his Marines were wounded badly enough that they would die in a day, maybe less, if they did not receive proper medical attention. The ship’s autodoc had helped stabilize them, but that was all it could do. And for those with burn injuries, it could do little more than temporarily deaden the pain.