In Her Name: The Last War (58 page)

Then he heard something that was at once familiar, and totally unexpected: the distant mechanical
clank
of docking clamps. 

“Jesus,” one of the crewmen cried, “one of their ships has docked with us!”

“They couldn’t,” one of the others said. “The only airlock that’s left is the auxiliary in the after engine room. They couldn’t dock with it.” 

“They can do anything,” Sato whispered, more to himself than to the others, as one of the Kreelans quickly peered around the corner, then darted back as she was met with another fusillade of rifle fire; Sato’s team had already run out of grenades. 

He felt a change in the tempo of the fighting in the other parts of the ship, mostly aft of where they were. “Engineering,” he said. “They’ve broken through to engineering!” Turning to the senior rating, one of the ship’s computer engineers, he said, “Take the team back to help DeFusco. If they take engineering...” He didn’t bother finishing the sentence. 

“Aye, aye, sir,” she said. “But what about you? You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head as he stood up and handed her what was left of his ammunition. He dropped the empty rifle to the deck. “I’ll buy you a little time.”

“But...”

“Go on,” he told her quietly. “Save our ship.”

Tears brimming in her eyes, the sailor turned and led the others back down the passageway toward the thundering fight that was raging near the engineering section. 

Sato drew his
katana
, then placed the lacquered scabbard carefully on the deck. It would be destroyed with the rest of the ship when the enemy overpowered the crew, but even in his final moments he would never dream of treating it with disrespect by thoughtlessly casting it aside.

The
katana
held confidently in his hands, he stepped forward into the passageway to face the warriors awaiting him.

* * *

The first men and women to board the
McClaren
were almost cut down by the skeleton crew in engineering who expected nothing other than a flood of enemy warriors, that they themselves had not yet seen in the flesh, to come streaming through the airlock. They stared in open-mouthed surprise and wonder at the ragged legionnaires and cavalrymen who quickly marched aboard.

“Heard you could use a bit of a hand,” Mills told a female engineer, a petty officer, who looked to be in charge.

“Jesus,” DeFusco said, shaking her head. “I just don’t believe it.”

“Let’s get a move on, shall we?
Allez!
” Mills said, and the legionnaires began to move to the forward end of the engine room, their weapons ready, the cavalrymen right beside them. They didn’t need anyone to steer them through the ship. They could clearly hear the sounds of the fighting going on, and did as many soldiers have done through history: they marched toward the sound of the guns.

“Get your people aboard,” Steph said, gesturing toward the waiting airlock.

“I can’t leave,” DeFusco told her bluntly. “I won’t leave the ship until we’ve got everyone back.”

“Then get your people into the boat and wait by the airlock,” Steph told her, knowing exactly how she felt. “We don’t have much time. I’ll stay with you in case the Kreelans poke their heads in here.” She gestured with her rifle, and DeFusco could tell she must have used it plenty already. The woman’s hands were nearly black with dirt and residue from firing the weapon’s caseless cartridges, and the rest of her wasn’t much better. She was a complete mess, and judging from the sunken look of her eyes must have been running on nothing but fumes.

“You’re that reporter woman, aren’t you?” DeFusco suddenly realized. “The one that Lieutenant...I mean, Captain Sato was, um...”

Steph offered her a tired smile. “You can say it,” she said. “We were dating. But
captain?
And did he...did he make it?”

“Yes on both counts,” DeFusco said, a look of concern shadowing her face as she hustled the remaining members of the engineering crew past her into the waiting boat, “at least when I saw him last, leading a team forward to defend the ship. A ship’s captain. And a damn good one, at that.”

* * *

Mills and the other soldiers didn’t have far to go to find the enemy. While none of the men and women who now swarmed through the passageways out of engineering and into what was left of the forward part of the ship had any experience in shipboard fighting, it was close enough to urban combat, with which most of them did have experience, that they adapted quickly. They also had the advantages of surprise and weight of numbers.

As they reached the survivors of the crew’s defense teams, which were now down to a handful of men and women, the soldiers sent them aft to the assault boat.

Then the legionnaires and cavalrymen began to mercilessly cut down the boarders, blasting them into bloody pulp through sheer weight of fire from their assault rifles.

* * *

Sato was ready. He was prepared to die and join the ghosts who still haunted his dreams from the
Aurora
, where part of his soul had been lost forever. He had no regrets, save that he had never told Steph how much he really loved her. He knew she would understand, and hoped with all his heart that she had survived the disaster that had befallen the troops on the ground. He would have given anything to be with her now, but he knew that wasn’t his destiny. 

Four warriors stood before him in the passageway, having left their bulky armored vacuum suits behind. Two stepped forward, their black armor and the silvery blades of their weapons gleaming, while the others held back.

Standing in a ready position, his legs spread forward and back and bent slightly, ready to spring, Sato held his sword in a two-handed grip, down low on his right, the blade’s tip pointing diagonally toward the deck. He knew his skills could not compare to the warriors he faced, but he would go down fighting. His
sensei
had given him that much.

That was what he thought up until the moment that the warriors, all of them, knelt down before him.

* * *

Taylan-Murir was a well-seasoned warrior with skills and scars from the many Challenges fought during her life. Like all others who had come here, save the great priestess and the senior shipmistress of the fleet, she had fought many for the honor to face the Empire’s latest enemy.

But
this
honor was entirely unexpected. As she and her three sisters came upon this particular group of human defenders, she sensed something in one of the animals.

They had come upon the Messenger.

She and her sisters would not have been able to explain how they knew this, for, as with many things for their ancient race, what once might have required thought and understanding or visible technology to achieve now simply
was
. He carried no mark, nor did she recognize his face, homely and pale as it was to her eyes. But Taylan-Murir knew that this human was the Messenger as surely as she knew her own name. So did her fellow warriors, and so, too, did every member of the fleet - indeed, her entire race - as her Bloodsong echoed her wonder and surprise. It was a great honor to be in the presence of a Messenger, and it was forbidden to bring one to harm. Indeed, it was unthinkable. Thus they had been careful to hold the humans at bay, but had not pressed their attack for fear of harming him.

This Messenger, she knew, was different from all others who had come before in her civilization’s half-million year history: he held a sword and clearly understood how to use it, and to die by his hand would be a very great honor. 

Trembling with pride, she and her sisters knelt before him, waiting for his blade to fall.

* * *

“No,” Sato whispered as the Kreelans kneeled on the deck, their heads bowed in respect as if he were a lord come to call. He knew this wasn’t just a coincidence. It couldn’t be. 

While most might have felt relief at such a reprieve, Sato felt a burning anger that rose into a fiery rage. He wanted a chance to prove himself, to take himself back to the sands of the arena where his shipmates from the
Aurora
had fought and died. He wanted to avenge their ghosts. “Get up!” he shouted at them, not caring that they couldn’t understand his words. “
Get on your feet and fight!
”

The four warriors made no move, but were still as statues carved from the deepest ebony. 

Rushing forward to the first one, the one he took to be their leader, he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. “Fight me, damn you!” He slammed the guard of his sword into her chest, knocking her back a step, trying to force a reaction from her.

But she again sank to her knees, and never met his gaze.

With a roar of anger and frustration, he yanked her to her feet once more, and put the blade of his sword to her throat above her collar and its glittering pendants, the razor sharp blade drawing a line of blood. Grabbing her chin, he forced her face up to look at his, and for a moment their eyes met. He knew he couldn’t read her body language and expressions, but he had no doubt of what he saw in those cat-like eyes that were at once totally alien, yet had a sense of captivating beauty: pure, utter ecstasy, as if she were enjoying a high from some alien drug. 

He pressed the sword’s blade harder against her neck, deepening the wound, her blood running over her collar and down her chest under the breast plate. “Fight me,” he hissed once more.

She only sighed as she stood there, trembling not with fear, but with pleasure, her weapon held loosely at her side, here eyes locked on his.

Finally, Sato let her go. The warrior sank to her knees, and then bowed her head to the floor. He thought briefly about trying to provoke the others into attacking, but knew it would be fruitless. 

He also considered simply killing them, slicing through their necks with his sword, just like he had practiced under his
sensei’s
supervision, chopping cleanly through targets of tightly woven fiber wound around a bamboo pole. Tightening his grip on his
katana
, he raised it over his head, preparing to kill her. 

But he couldn’t do it. He wanted to kill her, wanted to kill every last one of her kind for what they had done, but not in cold blood. He felt his rage dissipate like an ebbing tide, and the strength went out of his arms. Lowering the sword to his side, he slumped to the deck on his knees in front of the warrior, dispirited, empty.

Apparently intrigued by his refusal to kill her, she lifted her head from the floor and again met his gaze.

“Are you Lieutenant Sato?” a voice with what could only be a British accent whispered from behind him, pronouncing his rank as
leftenant
.

With a surprised start, Sato turned around to see a large soldier peering carefully around the hatch coaming in the passageway behind him, aiming his assault rifle at the aliens. He hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him. 

“Yes,” he said. “Who the devil are you?” That was when Sato noticed that there were no longer any sounds of fighting coming from the other parts of the ship. 

“The cavalry, you might say, lieutenant,” Mills told him. “
Soldat 1e Classe
Roland Mills of the
Légion étrangère
, at your service. Sent by one Miss Stephanie Guillaume. And might I ask, sir,” he went on, “just what the devil is going on here?”

Sato turned to look back at the warriors, who had taken absolutely no notice of Mills or the other men who now spread out behind him, aiming half a dozen assault rifles at the Kreelans. Their leader, blood still seeping down her neck from the cut he had given her, still watched him with her strange feline eyes, almost as if she were afraid or sad to see him go.

“I...don’t really know,” Sato told him honestly as he struggled to his feet, suddenly overwhelmed by physical and emotional exhaustion. He felt Mills’ powerful hand take him under the arm to help him up, the big soldier smoothly moving Sato behind him as the legionnaire kept the muzzle of his rifle pointed at the lead Kreelan’s head. 

Mills tensed to pull the trigger, but felt a hand on his arm, gently but insistently pushing his rifle down. 

“Leave them,” Sato said quietly. “Just leave them be.”

Pausing only to recover the scabbard for his sword, Sato headed back toward engineering, Mills and another legionnaire covering his back. Just before he turned the corner in the passageway, Sato glanced back to see that the Kreelan, still on her knees, was staring after him.

* * *

As soon as she caught sight of him, Steph threw herself in Sato’s arms, not giving a damn about military etiquette, protocol, or anything else. “Ichiro,” was all she could say before their lips met. She kissed him hard, and he returned every bit of her passion, holding her off her feet in a tight embrace.

“Sorry to dampen the reunion,” Mills said, exchanging a tired grin with his NCO, “but I think we’d best be off, lieutenant.”

Reluctantly letting go of Steph, Ichiro nodded. “Is everyone aboard the boat?”

“Yes, sir,” DeFusco answered, stepping forward to salute him. 

He returned it with a smile. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.” 

Following DeFusco and Steph, he and the two legionnaires stepped through the auxiliary airlock into the boat, and Sato watched with sad but relieved eyes as the hatch closed on his first, and probably his last, command.

* * *

Taylan-Murir and her three companions followed the Messenger and his escorts to where the humans had left, no doubt from a boat that had come to rescue him. She put a hand to her neck, feeling the sticky track of blood that had now stopped flowing, and shivered at the memory of looking into his face as he had held her at his mercy. Her fellow warriors were not jealous of her experience, for they had sensed it in their own veins: the
Kreela
were not all of one mind, but they were bound in spirit. And what one sensed, the emotions one felt, was a stream that fed the timeless river of the Bloodsong.

After pausing for a time where the humans had left the ship, they circulated through the other compartments that were not in vacuum, gathering up what few of their sisters who remained alive. They gave the last rites and ritual death to those who were too severely injured to leave the ship, for there were no healers here. They all had brought the Empress much honor this day, and their deeds would be duly recorded in the Books of Time.