In Her Name: The Last War (131 page)

His crews thought him a slave-driver, but he had also heard the scuttlebutt, the rumors, that he was a lucky sailor to have survived all that he had. His lips curled up slightly at the thought, wondering if the crew would still think that if they knew how many men and women had died on those ships. In a different age, he might have been considered a Jonah, a curse to his ship and crew.

Not this time
, he told himself sternly.
This time it’s going to be different
. The ships and crews were the finest in the fleet and the Kreelan forces awaiting them would be terribly outnumbered. This engagement wouldn’t be decided by luck or blind fate. It would be decided by superior planning and overwhelming weight of fire.

“Ten seconds.” The tension on the flag bridge rose even higher. “Transpace sequence in five...four...”

“Stand by!” Sato’s hands tightened on the grips of his chair. The 1st Battleship Flotilla and its escorts were scheduled to jump in first, with the rest of the fleet right behind them. 

“...three...two...one...” The computer voice paused. “Transpace sequence complete. Normal space emergence.”

The computer generated display on the main flag bridge screen changed to show the actual view of the system, with Alger’s World a bright disk taking up nearly half the screen. Green icons representing the other ships of the task force appeared around
Orion
and the three other battleships. They had all made it, and were in tight formation. 

“All ships accounted for,” the flag tactical officer reported. 

“Data links...are working.” The communications officer was surprised. “Links are up with the other ships of the flotilla and the escort group.”

Sato frowned. “Take advantage of the connectivity, but be ready to cut over to voice and vidcom immediately. Let’s not count on something we’re almost sure to lose.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Enemy ships identified, commodore.” Sato’s flag captain highlighted eight red icons on the tactical display. “Two cruiser class and six destroyer class, just rounding Alger’s World on a converging course.”

“Inbound contacts!” The tactical officer looked up. “Classify as...friendly! It’s the rest of the fleet, commodore. Right on schedule.”

Sato watched intently as a cloud of green icons appeared on the display. One of them was a brighter green. It was
Guadalcanal
, Admiral Voroshilov’s flagship. The assault carrier group had materialized right where they were supposed to be, in low orbit over Alger’s World. 

The Kreelan warships altered course, heading toward the carriers and their escorts. Sato saw that his task force was in a good position to intercept the enemy ships before they reached the assault group.

“Inform Admiral Voroshilov that the 1st Battleship Division will engage the enemy formation,” Sato said formally to the flag communications officer. Then, to the flag captain, he said, “Have the task force alter course to intercept the enemy. Let’s give them a taste of what
Orion
class battleships can do.”

* * *

“Acknowledge Commodore Sato’s signal,” Admiral Voroshilov said to his tactical officer, “and wish him godspeed.” He turned to the communications officer. “Is there any word from the ground reconnaissance teams?”

“Nothing yet, sir.” She frowned at her console as she worked the controls. “The spectrum’s clean. There’s nothing from the automatic beacons, no voice contact, no civilian broadcasts. Nothing. We’re transmitting the fleet beacon over the normal comm channels and then radio, but...” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

Voroshilov’s comm panel chimed, and he looked down to see an incoming call from General Sparks, who was with his troops in the assault boats in the carrier’s hold. “Yes, general?”

“We’re ready to deploy, sir.”

“We have nothing yet from the reconnaissance teams, my friend. I will not release the boats until we have targeting information.”

“At least let us clear the carriers, admiral. The boats can tag along in formation until we hear something. If enemy warships come calling in strength, I’d rather my troopers...Marines...have a chance to get to the surface than be useless ballast aboard your carriers.”

The admiral frowned, considering. The assault force had eight carriers, and had enough boats to drop all three divisions in one pass. While he was reluctant to deploy the boats on the chance that an overwhelming Kreelan fleet appeared, he hadn’t come to Alger’s World to lose. And when all was said and done, the Navy was here primarily to support the ground operation. Only Sparks and his Marines could actually save the people of the colony, and to do that they had to get on the ground. “Granted, general. I will issue the necessary orders. Prepare your Marines for immediate deployment.”

“Thank you, sir!” Sparks was clearly relieved.

As his face disappeared from the small comm screen, Voroshilov looked up again to his communications officer, who shook her head.

Still no contact
. His worry grew by the second as he turned his attention to the developing encounter between Sato’s battleships and the Kreelan warships. 

What had happened to the reconnaissance teams?

* * *

Mills watched the chronometer on his wrist, counting the seconds until the scheduled arrival of the fleet. The last hours had been agonizing as successive batches of people had been taken to the arenas. The longest any of them had lasted after Valentina’s fight had been fifteen minutes, and while the first few groups had almost a fifty percent survival rate, the latter ones hadn’t fared so well. 

Despite Steph’s best efforts at rallying their spirits, people were panicking. 

“Bloody hell,” he hissed, “where the devil’s the fleet?” His worry was compounded by gnawing discomfort from the aches in his shoulders, arms, and neck from being stuck in the same position for so long. A trail of native insects, akin to large ants, had made a trail through his hide position, and he could feel a sick tickling sensation as they marched across his back. Fortunately, none of them had decided to take a bite of him. Even if they had, he wouldn’t have been able to move.

He held the radio unit that Valentina had cobbled together. When he wasn’t staring through the rifle scope to watch the activity in the camp, he was alternately stared at radio and his chronometer. 

The fleet’s past due
. He wondered if the operation had been called off at the last minute. If so, he would still go through with the breakout plan, although the end game would still have every human on this world dead.

The gates opened up again and the warriors returned for more victims. This time they brought four survivors, one of whom was being carried by two of the others. 

The people in the crowd surged back toward the rear fence of the camp. There weren’t any more orderly groups of twenty people ready to face their doom. The returning survivors had been the last such group that Steph and Valentina had been able to organize. He had watched as Valentina had tried to go with every single group that went, but the warriors always refused her. 

The two women, Allison, and the black man went to help the survivors. 

The warriors stood waiting, but no one was volunteering to come forward.

“It’s time, mate.” There was no point in waiting any longer before putting his plan into action. If he didn’t do something now, even more people would die, killed by the Kreelans or trampled in a panicked stampede like trapped animals. At least if they were freed from the camp they would have some small chance at freedom.

He pulled the remote detonator for the grenades from a pouch on his combat belt. Flipping up the arming cover, he was just easing pressure onto the button that would trigger the grenades when the radio console blinked.

Looking down quickly, he saw that it was displaying a beacon signal from
Guadalcanal
, the fleet’s flagship.

Setting down the detonator, he pressed the transmit button on the console. 

“
Guadalcanal
, this is Echo-Six,” Mills whispered, hoping the radio had the power to reach the fleet. He knew Valentina wouldn’t have put together a hunk of junk, but everything else for this mission had gone wrong, and he was expecting yet another disaster. “Come in,
Guadalcanal
.”

His hopes sagged as he heard nothing but silence, and was about to call again when a voice boomed in his ear. 

“Echo-Six, this is
Guadalcanal
. Fleet is in position and awaiting targeting information, over.”

“Thank you, God.” Mills didn’t consider himself much of a believer, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. He pressed the transmit button. “
Guadalcanal
, target concentration is in the town of Breakwater, located at...” He read a string of coordinates. “Note that we have several thousand civilians being held here. I’m going to try and break them out, but will need help fast to keep the enemy from hunting us down.”

“Understood, Echo-Six. Have you had any contact with the other teams?”

“Negative.” Mills tensed as saw movement in the camp. Putting his eye again to the rifle scope, he saw that the Kreelans were beginning to move toward the crowd of people to take the next victims. “We’ve had no contact with them since the drop and assume they’ve been neutralized. We have no other information on other Kreelan concentrations, but there’s a bloody trainload of them here.”

Valentina, Steph, and the black man made to intervene between the warriors and the terrified people, but the Kreelans waved the stun wands at them, forcing them to back off.

“Listen, mate, just send a bloody division here to Breakwater as fast as you please. Tell them to expect a very hot reception. I’ve got to go. Echo-Six, out.”

Shutting down the radio and carefully putting it back in its makeshift case, Mills grabbed up the remote detonator and held it in his left hand. Then he snugged the big rifle into his shoulder with his right hand, staring through the scope at the disaster about to unfold in the camp.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed the button on the detonator.

* * *

Ku’ar-Marekh looked into the sky as she felt it, a wave of excitement and bloodlust from the warriors of the ships orbiting above. 

Casting her mind’s eye upward, she found the human ships that had come to do battle. She sensed the elation of the shipmistresses as they saw that they were not only outnumbered, but that the humans had with them a new class of warship, far more powerful than any of the Imperial ships in this system. They stood no chance of survival, but their deaths would bring great glory to the Empress.

She also sensed…something else. Expanding the reach of her spirit as she slowed time, she flowed through the human ships until she found it. Him.

The Messenger.

Ku’ar-Marekh considered this for a long moment. A Messenger had never been killed, in all the ages recorded in the Books of Time, even in the age of chaos before the Empire. 

It was also true that one who had been so marked had never again engaged in battle, for that was part of the Way. Yet this Messenger, as was well known among all the priestesses and many warriors, had fought after he had been marked, and in his last battle had been shown a great mercy by Li’ara-Zhurah, a disciple of Tesh-Dar.

It had brought great honor to the young warrior, but Ku’ar-Marekh was not inclined to be charitable. If the Messenger had again taken up the sword, then he was willing to die by it. It was not the Way of the Empress, but perhaps it was for the humans.

“In Her name,” Ku’ar-Marekh whispered, “let it be so.” 

She turned to the warriors surrounding the arenas, who had also felt the stirring in the Bloodsong. “More humans have come to give battle to our sisters in the fleet. Let us continue the Challenge until the arrival of their warriors.”

The peers gave a horrendous roar of joy even as they felt the ecstatic pulses in the Bloodsong of the warriors in orbit as they began to die.

Their roar of blood lust was drowned out by rippling explosions coming from the direction of the holding pen.

* * *

“Targets in range, commodore.” The flag tactical officer looked up at Sato, nodding. 

On the main screen on
Orion’s
flag bridge, icons representing the battleships were joined with the rapidly approaching Kreelan warships with thin lines indicating the targets designated for each ship.

Sato leaned back in his command chair. “Open fire.”

As one, the guns of the four battleships spoke. Each ship was precisely aligned along the projected track of four of the six enemy destroyers. A moment after Sato’s command was relayed, four beams of intense light stabbed out from the bow of each ship, and an instant later the four destroyers disappeared in titanic fireballs. 

Sato felt a sense of deep satisfaction. The pulse cannons had been largely ineffective when mounted in smaller vessels because of their huge energy requirements. The battleships, on the other hand, had power to spare from their four massive fusion plants, and the energy drain on other systems in the ship was negligible. The recycle time was less also than ten seconds before the ship could fire the weapon again.

The remaining two enemy destroyers and the pair of cruisers didn’t disappoint Sato. Instead of trying to run, they began a complex evasion pattern as they tried to work their way closer to the carrier strike group. 

“Kinetics firing...now.” 

The twelve thirty centimeter main guns of each of the four battleships fired, sending their massive shells toward the volume of space through which the Kreelan ships had to pass to reach the carriers. The hull of the
Orion
echoed with man-made thunder as the guns salvoed five rounds each. 

“Magnify the view, if you please.” Sato wanted to see the effects of the weapons on the enemy ships. The optical station at the fore end of the ship zoomed in on the enemy vessels, capturing their rakish lines and haunting runes that adorned their flanks.

The entire flag bridge crew stared at the tactical display, watching the rounds trace their way through virtual space to finally intersect with the four remaining Kreelan warships.