In Her Name: The Last War (119 page)

The Bloodsong, which bound together the Children of the Empress, still flowed in her veins, but only as a source of power. The tide of emotions from her sisters in blood that ebbed and flowed within it were no more to her now than the rise and fall of the waves of a long dead sea. All the feelings that made up the complex tapestry of her soul were gone. 

Even the knowledge that all the Children of the Empress, every soul in an empire that spanned ten thousand suns, would die if they failed in their search for the First Empress and the One failed to move her. That their race was within but a few generations of extinction had become nothing more than a dry fact.

Drawing her mind away from what she could not change, Ku’ar-Marekh focused on the present. Somewhere ahead was a small band of humans that had proven particularly adept at inflicting serious losses on her warriors before melting away into the woods. They were well-armed with weapons of which the Empress would approve, without any of the more advanced systems that made the battle more between machines than true combatants.

She had tracked them this far mainly by scent. The humans, for all their cunning, could not completely mask their odor, or that of the weapons they used. She could identify eleven unique human scents, along with traces of oil and chemical residue of weapons that had been recently fired. They had covered their tracks extremely well, and...

She heard the faint mechanical sound of a trigger being pulled back ever so slightly. In a blur of motion, she drew one of her three
shrekkas
and hurled it at a patch of leaves on the ground at the base of a pile of large rocks not far ahead of her. As the weapon left her hand, she leaped into the air toward where the human animal lay in ambush, her body sailing between the trees as if she were borne on the wind.

The
shrekka
tore into her prey, and Ku’ar-Marekh was rewarded with the animal’s shriek of agony as the
shrekka’s
blades ripped down the human’s spine. 

She drew her sword in mid-air and did a graceful forward flip. Landing with her legs astride the writhing human, she stabbed the sword downward, the gleaming tip spearing the creature through the heart. 

Ku’ar-Marekh snatched another
shrekka
from her shoulder and hurled it at a human whose head had poked out from among the rocks above her. The creature had no time to cry out as the whirling blades took its head from its neck in a spray of crimson.

She leaped again, this time to the top of the rock outcropping where she found two more humans armed with rifles. She took the head from one with her sword, and simply grabbed the other one and tossed him bodily from the rock, ignoring his scream as he fell to the ground below. 

Four
. Ku’ar-Marekh mentally tallied the kills, knowing there were at least seven more. She could feel the surge of power in the Bloodsong, but the elation, the ecstasy she had once felt were missing. It was a bright light that flared in her heart, but brought no warmth to her soul. 

Four humans emerged from where they had been sheltering in the rocks. All of them opened fire on her with their rifles.

The bullets came within an arm’s length of her body and simply fell from the air, so hot that they instantly melted into small pools of metal that set the leaves smoldering. 

Pausing to gape at what their eyes told them, yet clearly not believing what they saw, the humans continued to fire, and the other three she had knew must be here stepped from behind the rocks and joined in. 

Between them, they fired hundreds of rounds at her, until their magazines ran dry and a pool of molten metal sizzled on the ground before Ku’ar-Marekh. 

Two of the humans tried to run, and she was upon them in an instant, her sword flashing as she leaped beyond the ring of fire that now surrounded her. 

Another charged at her, brandishing a knife, and in the blink of an eye she slammed her sword back into its scabbard and faced her opponent with only her claws. He was skilled and fearless, but was no match for her. After toying with him enough to satisfy her honor, she clawed the knife from his hand, then drove the talons of one hand into his throat.

She whirled as the remaining four humans attacked her. She did not bother to draw her sword. One of them came at her with a knife, but only used it as a diversion. When the human was close enough, he simply grabbed her in a bear hug and shoved her backward, no doubt hoping to pin her to the ground while the remaining humans finished her off.

Using the animal’s momentum, she leaped backward, sailing into the air with the human clinging to her, terrified. She grasped its head and twisted it until the neck snapped, then tossed the animal away before landing on her feet. 

Looking up, she saw that the surviving humans, which she had expected to try and run, were instead coming straight at her, bellowing what must have passed for war cries.

Then she noticed what they held in their hands. Explosive grenades. 

A fair contest, then
, she told herself. Focusing on them, she reached out with her spirit and found their hearts. Then she began to squeeze.

The three humans collapsed in mid-stride, the grenades, all of them armed, rolling from their twitching hands.

Ku’ar-Marekh released her hold on their hearts and watched just long enough to see the realization dawn in their eyes of how their lives would be ended. 

By their own grenades.

Then she leaped away, gliding to the ground below. 

Behind her, the three humans were consumed by thunder and flame.

* * *

“I don’t fucking believe this.” Mills stood between the pilots as they guided the ship to rendezvous with the incoming courier. “If the Kreelans don’t pick up on this stunt, I’ll eat my drawers.”

“You’re probably safe on that count, Mills.” The pilot’s voice was tense as she watched the head-up display that showed the soft-dock approach of the other ship. “Our buddies here had good timing. The ESM sensors aren’t chirping at us.” 

The Electronic Surveillance Measures, or ESM, suite on the ship was designed to warn the crew if any signals from enemy ships were strong enough to detect them. When they were near the detection threshold, the system warned the crew with a variety of chirps and automated voice warnings.

“I don’t give a bloody damn. We’re exposed as hell and on a tight timeline now. Whoever comes aboard had better have a good reason or I’ll wring his neck for putting us and the mission in such danger.”

A few moments later, the two ships were flying side-by-side, and there was a gentle thunk outside the airlock as the soft-dock tubes linked up. They didn’t bother to pressurize it.

“The link’s good.” The pilot confirmed the hookup to her counterpart in the other ship. “Send over your cargo.”

A few minutes later a figure in a vacuum suit moved awkwardly though the tube to enter their air lock, then turned to hit the control to close the outer door.

When the lock indicator showed it was pressurized, Mills slid the hatch open and stood in the doorway, glaring at the suited figure. 

Whoever it was fumbled with the helmet catches, but Mills didn’t offer to help. He was furious.

As soon as the newcomer managed to undo the catches and began to take off the helmet, Mills lit into whoever it was. 

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re the goddamn Chief of Naval Staff,” he said coldly. “Your coming here may have put the knife to all of us, and...”

“Oh, my God.” Valentina, who stood beside him, put a hand up to her mouth in surprise as the face behind the helmet was revealed.

“And here I thought you two would be happy to see me.” A woman with brunette hair handed her helmet to a stunned Roland Mills.

Mills heard someone behind him blurt, “Who the fuck is that?”

“That,” Valentina said, unable to suppress a smile, “is Stephanie Guillaume-Sato, Commodore Ichiro Sato’s wife.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

“What the devil are you doing here, Steph?” Mills helped Steph strip out of her vacuum suit, revealing combat fatigues identical to his own, but without any badge of rank. 

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
.