In Her Name: The Last War (40 page)

As she snapped the whip again to clear the barbs from the human’s flesh, her heightened senses warned her that danger was near. With a leap to one side that no human who witnessed it would have ever believed, she easily dodged the projectiles fired by the primitive weapon mounted on the vehicle. She watched as the vehicle suddenly burst from the hole the humans had dug for it to head quickly down the road, the human on top still firing madly at her warriors, and missing most of them. One of the warriors finally tired of him and took his head with a
shrekka
. 

With her blood roaring a symphony in her spiritual ears, Tesh-Dar coiled her
grakh’ta
and set off toward one of the other vehicles, seeking new prey.

* * *

Grishin stood in one of the hatches, accepting the risk to his neck in exchange for the ability to see more clearly as the command vehicle swept around a bend in the road that passed by the positions of the
1er Escadron de combat
, the regiment’s first tank squadron.

“
Merde
...” the vehicle commander cursed just before he started firing the top-mounted gun. There was certainly no shortage of targets.

Grishin looked on in horror as Kreelan warriors clad in black armor swarmed over the wheeled tanks of the
1er Escadron
like black ants. A few of the vehicles had made it out of their firing pits and were trying to keep the warriors at a distance while blasting away at them. Some vehicles had not, and Grishin saw a warrior atop a buttoned up tank stab her sword right through the armored commander’s hatch. As she pulled the blade out of the metal, he saw that it was slick with blood. 

Impossible
, he thought.
No metal blade could cut through steel alloy armor like that!
Granted, it was not nearly so thick as the armor that protected the heavy Terran tanks, but it was simply not possible.

But it was. Other warriors did the same thing, stabbing their weapons through the armor of the driver’s and gunner’s hatches. Then one of them affixed some sort of bomb to the rear of the vehicle, and the warriors leaped clear as the light tank was consumed by what looked like a massive electrical discharge that left behind a smoldering, charred wreck.

“
Putain!
” the vehicle commander hissed, using one of his favorite curses. He dropped into the vehicle, his right arm hanging by a thread of flesh: most of the muscle and the bone had been cut through halfway above the elbow. “One of those bitches hit me with one of those flying things,” he gasped, his face already turning pale from shock. 

“Help me,” Grishin ordered the last legionnaire left in the rear compartment, who had been firing his rifle at the enemy through one of the vehicle’s gun ports. Unlike his Terran counterpart, Sparks, Grishin had his main staff officers in different vehicles, which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because if one of them was hit, the entire command staff would not be wiped out, and the most senior surviving officer could take over. A curse because without communications, he had no idea if any of them were even still alive to help get the regiment out of this disaster. 

Grishin grabbed the sergeant around his chest, ignoring the blood cascading over his arms as he did so. The other legionnaire grabbed his legs, and together they moved him onto one of the combat seats along the side of the compartment. 

“Do what you can for him,” Grishin ordered before standing up through the roof hatch and manning the machine gun. He managed to clear some of the warriors off of the top of one of the tanks as it backed out of its firing pit, and he signaled for the commander to join on him. Two other tanks also joined up, and they quickly formed an echelon left, with the three tanks in a staggered line that gave all of them clear fields of fire into the bulk of the rampaging aliens, with Grishin’s vehicle following close behind them.

Past their shock now, the legionnaires manning the three tanks began to give a good accounting of themselves as they poured machinegun fire into the groups of warriors attacking other tanks that hadn’t had a chance to get out of their firing pits. The tank crews fired antipersonnel rounds, carrying thousands of needle-like flechettes, from their main guns, literally blasting the Kreelans from the backs of some of the tanks in clouds of bloody flesh and shrapnel. 

Surely the enemy must be about to break
, Grishin told himself as they killed Kreelans by the dozens, even as the warriors charged the tanks with swords raised high and war cries on their lips. 

But they didn’t break: the alien warriors kept on coming. 

While the Kreelans had held the upper hand in the beginning, Grishin’s legionnaires were now giving as good as they had gotten. But the enemy did not die easily, nor were they slaughtered without cost. As his formation swept along the rear of each of his companies, rallying the survivors, the enemy warriors fought even harder. They hurled themselves at his tanks, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, but all as suicidal maniacs, and he could hear their fierce war cries through the chattering of the machine guns and the booming of the tanks’ main guns.

When they made it to the rear of the last company, the
5ème Escadron
, and rallied what was left of it, Grishin was momentarily struck by despair. Of the roughly forty-eight tanks of the four tank squadrons, plus the various other vehicles that made up the regiment, he now only had half a dozen tanks and a handful of the other vehicles, most of which were as lightly armed as his command vehicle. Suicidal maniacs the Kreelans may have been, but they had effectively gutted his unit. And there were still hundreds left alive behind him.

From here, on the far right edge of his regiment’s assigned area of responsibility, he should have been able to see the positions of the
2ème Régiment étranger de parachutistes
, the famous
2ème REP
, next to them. He had heard that the paratroops’ commander had been livid at having to deploy his unit as regular infantry in prepared trenches, but those were his orders and he had carried them out. Now Grishin could see nothing of the famous elite unit, only a massive swarm of alien warriors. Looking through his field scope at the ferocious close combat there, he could think of no way to help them: the legionnaires were locked in bitter hand to hand fighting, and he could not use his tanks to good effect without killing his fellow legionnaires. 

After a moment he realized that the point was moot: the paratroopers, while clearly fighting valiantly, were also being completely overwhelmed. Their part of the battle was already over.

“
Mon colonel
,” the vehicle commander said thickly through the painkillers that the attending legionnaire had pumped into his system after applying a tourniquet and self-sealing bandages. “Behind us.”

Grishin turned to look behind them, and was shocked to see a line of Kreelan warriors standing there, clearly waiting for him and his men. There really was nowhere for him to run, not that he was inclined to. The road that had been the baseline for the regiment’s deployment had relatively open ground to the front for a few hundred meters, but then swiftly turned into dense woods that would be difficult, if not impossible, for his tanks to traverse. To the rear was another hundred or so meters edged by a steep drainage culvert. He would have liked to deploy his regiment on the other side of that defensive feature, on the “inside” toward Foshan, rather than on the “outside” where he was now, but that had been forbidden by the Keran government because of the high-value property in this area. Grishin suddenly wished he had done what Sparks had, and driven his tanks right into the houses and business buildings there, the local government be damned. But it was too late for that. 

Besides, while his motivations were different, he was no less a warrior than the alien creatures he now confronted. And while his personal courage had wavered for a moment after they had appeared, he was no longer afraid.

He knew that there was only one option left: to try and break through to link up with the Terran tank regiment, if it still survived. Against so many warriors, the legionnaires stood little chance of survival. Grishin smiled to himself. He had always wished that he could die in a modern-day Battle of Camarón, where centuries before a small band of legionnaires had held off an army of nearly two thousand men in a battle that had become legend. He had never thought this wish would come true. So few ever had.

Signaling his tank commanders to wheel right and come line-abreast facing the Kreelan warriors who stood patiently waiting for them, Grishin rendered his men a sharp salute, which they returned. Legionnaires, to the last.

“
Camarón!
” Grishin bellowed as the survivors of the
1er REC
charged the enemy line, guns thundering.

* * *

Tesh-Dar had quickly become bored with digging the humans out of their strange vehicles. Leaving Kamal-Utai and Li’ara-Zhurah to lead the warriors who had jumped from their doomed ship, for they could not keep up with her, Tesh-Dar raced along the human lines at an inhuman speed, far faster than any human being had ever run. She had seen in her mind’s eye a nearby group of human warriors that had no vehicles, and went to meet them.

As she did, a group of warriors from one of the other ships was dropping onto that part of the human line, and the humans fired their projectile weapons at them. While the warriors preferred their swords and claws, they had no hesitation in unslinging their own projectile weapons and firing back. Tesh-Dar was proud to see that they were far more accurate than the humans, with nearly every round finding its target.

With a final great leap, her heart pounding with anticipation, she landed next to the strange trench they had dug for themselves and unleashed her
grakh’ta
whip.

* * *

Soldat 1e Classe
Roland Mills had joined the
Légion étrangère
for the same reason countless others had over the centuries: he was an adventurer and soldier of fortune. Aside from his rugged good looks and muscular build, he was unlike the romantic stereotype of the legionnaire: he wasn’t trying to escape his past or avoid pursuit by any authorities. In fact, he came from a very respectable English family back on Earth, and had never committed a crime. While he would have lightly scoffed at anyone who thought him a scholar, he was nonetheless quite well-educated. By all accounts, he would have made an excellent barrister and family man, except for one tiny quirk: he was a hopeless adrenaline junky. He had immersed himself in virtually every extreme and nearly-suicidal endeavor he could find, but eventually they came to bore him. 

Then one day, he happened to see a news broadcast that played a bit about the Alliance
Légion étrangère
, and came to see it as a nearly non-stop thrill-ride. Over his family’s vehement protestations, he signed up two days later at the recruiting center in Paris.

Nearly eighteen months later, despite having had to adjust his perception of reality of what the Legion really was, he had come to really enjoy it. Learning French had been a snap for him, as had the other basic skills he had been taught. 

In the end, he had gotten what he had hoped for: he was selected for the elite
2ème REP
and was given jump training (although he already knew how to jump and paraglide). He had loved every minute of it. 

When he found the Alliance was deploying every one of the Legion’s combat regiments to Keran to protect it against a possible (if far-fetched) alien threat, he had been elated. He had never seen combat, and was hoping that this would be his chance.

Now, however, elation wasn’t the emotion he felt. It was gut-wrenching fear melded with the determination to survive as alien starships thundered overhead, dropping thousands of alien paratroops right on top of the regiment’s lines. He had been looking for the ultimate thrill, and he was afraid that he might have found it.

“Fire!” his squad leader shouted, echoing the orders passed along the line of the entire regiment as the aliens flew down on their version of paragliders. Over a thousand legionnaires fired their rifles and automatic weapons nearly straight up at their swarming attackers. A handful of aliens, then dozens, began to fall from the sky, dead and wounded.

But the enemy proved to be far from helpless, even as they glided toward the ground. They had their own rifles, and with inhuman accuracy began to kill legionnaires. Some also dropped what looked like hand grenades where legionnaires had bunched together. But when they detonated they released an enormous electrical flux like lightning, turning everything in a radius of four meters into smoldering carbon.

Easily outnumbered two to one, the legionnaires did what they had done since Camarón: they stood their ground, fought, and died. 

Roland Mills, however, wasn’t ready to die yet. He was terrified, but this was what he had joined the Legion for, after all: the opportunity to participate in unrestricted mayhem. Combat was the ultimate adrenaline rush. 

Taking aim at the nearest cloud of warriors bearing down on their lines, he opened fire, emptying an entire magazine into their formation and taking grim satisfaction at seeing six of them plummet to the ground, out of control.

“Mills,
down!
” one of the other legionnaires in his squad shouted. Mills dropped to the bottom of the trench as a warrior swept down behind him. Three of his squad mates blasted the thing to bits with their rifles, spattering Mills with bloody gore. 

Suddenly, over the unbelievable din of men and aliens shouting and screaming and the non-stop firing of rifles by both sides, he distinctly heard a strange
whip-crack!
from just beyond the parapet around the trench. Mills looked up just in time to see what looked like a set of thin, barbed tentacles snap over the top of the parapet to wrap themselves around one of his fellow legionnaires. The man screamed in fear and agony as the metal barbs pierced his flesh and the whip-like tails of whatever the thing was encircled his limbs and torso.