In Her Name: The Last War (92 page)

Following Sikorsky’s cue, she shifted her aim slightly, the big weapon’s electronic sight immediately picking up the thermal signature of the three soldiers who were trying to low-crawl their way toward the Central Chamber building, using a small decorative wall for cover. They had not yet learned that her weapon was powerful enough to shoot through a foot of reinforced concrete and kill a man on the other side.

“Firing,” she announced before holding her breath and stroking the trigger. The weapon fired with a deafening boom, the recoil against her shoulder shoving her back a few centimeters. 

Sikorsky watched as the three soldiers disappeared in an explosion of stone and flesh. Unlike a standard rifle, which usually simply punched holes through the human body, the rounds from this weapon literally blew them apart. Having been an infantryman during the war against Earth and the Alliance, he could imagine the terror of the men down there in the square, knowing that they would not merely be shot, but blown to bits, if they were not behind solid cover, and if they did not
stay
there. Valentina’s aim was supernatural, and her eyesight must also have been exquisite, for she had seen movement and picked out targets that he had barely seen with his more powerful spotting scope. In all, Valentina had killed fifty-six enemy soldiers in the brief time since they had taken up residence in the clock tower, including what he believed must have been virtually all of the enemy battalion’s officers and senior NCOs. Leading their men headlong across the square to the Central Chamber building as part of the quick reaction force called in against the Marines, Valentina had massacred them.

The butchery, while gruesome, had reinforced his faith that she was the best chance of survival he and Ludmilla had.

Valentina was scanning for more targets when she heard Grishin’s voice in her earphone. 

“Scarlet,” he said, “they are not here. This was all for nothing.”

“Shit,” she said in response.

“
Da
,” he said. “Exactly so. I am ordering the rest of the brigade to not bother coming here, but to head to the main spaceport to secure it if they can. They will need to find a ship we can use to get back to the fleet. We will pull out from here using the cutter, and then provide the brigade with fire support as they assault the spaceport.” He paused. “With the enemy troops now so close to the building here...”

“Don’t worry, colonel,” she promised. “I’ll cover you as you load up the cutter. We’ll be ready to hop on board as you cross over the wall.”

“Be careful,
dorogaya
,” he said. “And good hunting.”

“Dmitri, Ludmilla!” Valentina called out. “We’re pulling out of here. We have to cover the Marines as they move from the Central Chamber building to the cutter, then they’ll pick us up on the way out.” She turned to look at each of them in turn. “The Ceremonial Guards will do everything they can to stop us. Be prepared.”

“We are ready,” Sikorsky answered, and Ludmilla nodded before turning back to watching the door behind them.

Above them, the drone of the cutter’s engines suddenly became louder, just before its point defense lasers ripped through the sky.

* * *

Grishin cringed as the sky around the government complex suddenly seemed to explode. The Russians had fired a volley of anti-aircraft missiles at the cutter, trying to saturate its defenses. The point-defense lasers were up to the task, but barely. He could see where the ship’s hull was pitted and scored by shrapnel from one of the missile warheads, and he hoped the hull hadn’t been penetrated. If it had, the cutter would no longer be spaceworthy until it could be patched.

The ship dove over the wall surrounding the complex, the lasers firing at any enemy troops who were exposed. The pilot managed to maneuver the ship right up next to the Central Chamber building, the ramps already down.

“Get aboard!” Grishin ordered. “Quickly!”

The Marines needed no coaxing. In a fast but orderly manner, they ran up the ramp, diving into their seats inside. 

The Russian troops huddling around the fountains, concrete benches, and other bits of cover afforded in the square suddenly came to life. Even with most of their officers gone, they knew that this was their last and probably best chance to kill the Marines. As one, they knelt and stood up and began to pour fire into the cutter, with those who were in throwing distance preparing their grenades.

The cutter’s point defense lasers sent a cascade of emerald beams across the square, vaporizing half a dozen men. But the geometry was bad: the weapons simply couldn’t be brought to bear against most of the now-berserk Russians, half of whom had gotten to their feet and were charging toward the vulnerable rear of the cutter, their enraged howling nearly as loud as the cutter’s hover engines.

Amid the bedlam, two Russian soldiers calmly readied hypervelocity missiles that could obliterate a heavily armored tank.

* * *

“Firing!” Valentina hissed as she pulled the trigger, blasting a Russian soldier who had been cocking his arm to throw a grenade. The grenade fell to the ground and exploded, sending several other soldiers flying. She selected another target and fired, then again and again. “
Blyad’
,” she cursed, “they’re rushing the ship!”

She whipped her head to the side as an assault rifle went off right next to her: it was Dmitri, using the rifle she had carried up here, doing what he could to help stop the attacking Russians. He could not fire accurately at this range, but he didn’t have to: if a bullet landed almost anywhere in the square down there, it would hit a Russian soldier. 

“Keep shooting!” he shouted at her as he fired short bursts into the mass of screaming Russian troops that were now surging toward the cutter.

Putting her eyes to the electronic scope again, Valentina tried to sort out the most important targets in the swirling mass of bodies. She caught another soldier about to throw a grenade, blowing his torso to pieces, the tungsten needle continuing on to shred three other soldiers before it stopped. She had to be careful, because if one of those slugs hit the cutter, it would punch right through the hull.
Boom
. Another grenade thrower went down.
Boom
. Four soldiers who had lined up in a perfect row as they ran now lay together in death. 

Her first magazine empty, she quickly changed it, keeping her eyes glued to the cutter. She watched in amazement as several small objects arced over the top of the cutter from the far side where the Marines were dashing aboard: grenades they had blindly tossed over the ship into the attacking Russians. They exploded almost simultaneously, wiping away most of the lead rank of attackers, but there were more behind them. Many more.

“Reloading!” Dmitri cried as he popped out his weapon’s empty magazine and slammed another home.

Valentina did the same, ramming the massive magazine for her weapon into its slot and pulling the charging handle to chamber a round. There was a brief hissing sound as a tiny amount of liquid propellant was vaporized in the weapon’s breech, and a tiny green ready light glowed. 

“Firing!” she announced again, beginning a rapid series of shots that echoed among the government buildings like God’s own thunder. Attacking soldiers were blown apart one after another. Just as the first Russians got close enough to the cutter that Valentina dared not fire on them, the attack faltered, her continued hammer blows having literally gutted their advance.

At last, after what had seemed a lifetime but was really less than a minute, the cutter lifted off, the pilot shearing the top from an old oak tree that stood near the Central Chamber building. Free now of the intervening obstacles that had kept them largely silent while the ship was on the ground, the cutter’s point defense lasers tore through the Russian troops who now stood in the middle of the square, firing up at the ship’s belly as it passed overhead. 

“Valentina!” Sikorsky shouted desperately. “
Missile launcher, behind the main fountain!
”

Cursing under her breath, Valentina lowered her muzzle, searching for the target Dmitri had called out. She only saw troops standing, blazing away at the cutter. She didn’t see any missile...there! The two soldiers were blocked by several others; she could only see the tip of the missile in its launcher tube, slowly tracking the cutter. As if in slow motion, she saw a plume of white smoke from the ejection charge puff to the rear, boosting the missile out of the launch tube just as she pulled the trigger.

“
No!
” Sikorsky cried as the missile’s motor ignited and it raced through the air like lightning toward the cutter. 

Valentina had lost sight of the launcher when she fired, her weapon’s recoil knocking her back. She lowered the big rifle to stare at the scene: she could see that the launch crew was dead, along with the soldiers in front of them, but she realized that she had been just a fraction of a second too late. “
Nam konets
,” she said, her heart in her throat. “We’re fucked.”

The missile streaked toward the cutter, blowing off one of its horizontal stabilizers in a cascade of sparks and flying metal shards.

In that instant, Valentina realized that her last round had made a difference: the missile’s aim must have been knocked off by just a hair when her shot vaporized the man’s torso.

The ship wobbled, but remained steady as it headed directly for them. She knew it would not be spaceworthy, but would get them at least as far as the spaceport. Probably. 

“Dmitri!” Ludmilla suddenly cried as a hollow boom echoed from the stairwell behind them: someone had set off Valentina’s booby-trap.

“Get behind me!” Valentina cried as she got to her feet. Moving away from the courtyard side of the wall, which was now being hit by a hail of gunfire as the angry Russian mob below fired at the approaching cutter, she knelt next to one of the pillars supporting the huge clock above them, aiming the big rifle at the door. Ludmilla crouched on the other side of the pillar, with Sikorsky standing next to Valentina. “You get her on the boat!” Valentina ordered him. 

“We are not leaving without you!” he told her angrily as the cutter swung parallel to the wall, the pilot clearly wrestling with the controls after the loss of the stabilizer. 

The door exploded outward with the force of several grenades that had been thrown by the troops coming up the stairwell. Valentina did not even bother to wait for a target: she just began to fire rhythmically into the smoke-filled doorway. Parts of a man flew out of the smoke, then more. 

Then one of them low-crawled through the doorway, below her line of sight. He fired his weapon at her on full automatic, and her body flew back against the red brick of the pillar, dancing like a marionette as the bullets slammed into her. She slumped to the ground, leaving wide streaks of blood on the brick pillar.

The soldier’s success was cut short by a vicious burst of rifle fire from the cutter: Mills hung out of the open hatch, Sabourin holding onto his utility belt to keep him from falling, smoke swirling from the muzzle of his rifle. One of the other Marines pumped a magazine of rifle-fired grenades down the stairwell, blowing apart the other Russians still inside. 

Sabourin let go of Mills as the cutter bounced against the side of the wall, and he jumped to where Dmitri and Ludmilla knelt next to Valentina. He moved to scoop her up, but Dmitri pushed him away.

“I will take her,” he said, tears running down his face. “I will carry her.”

With Ludmilla weeping beside him, he gathered up Valentina’s shattered body in his arms and carried her aboard the cutter, a grim-faced Mills covering his back.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

“The Messenger moves away from us,” the senior warrior at the tactical station reported, “toward the planet.”

“He fears us,” Li’ara-Zhurah replied from her position in the ship’s command chair. She was in many ways junior to most of the other warriors on the ship, but they acceded to her authority both because she was Tesh-Dar’s chosen one, and because the pendants she had earned in battle placed her higher on the steps to the throne. Her own self-confidence had wavered slightly when she had first come aboard the ship, after Tesh-Dar had given her permission to assist the Messenger and heal him. Yet after a few moments in the command chair, her fears of any inadequacy faded away: she was a blood daughter of the Empress, and to this she had been born. “He does not understand the Way, nor his place in it, Ulan-Tyr.”

Ulan-Tyr nodded understanding, although the emotions flowing in her Bloodsong betrayed her skepticism. She did not doubt the Messenger’s place or importance, only the concept that he could not comprehend it himself.

They continued to pursue the fleeing human ship, gradually closing the range. At first, Li’ara-Zhurah had been surprised that the humans had not fired on their pursuers, but then remembered that nuclear detonations could destroy the primitive electronic components that were critical to the functioning of ships of this technological epoch. The Messenger’s ship apparently had some sensors remaining that could detect other ships, but no functioning weapons with which to engage them. This made Li’ara-Zhurah’s mission much, much easier: otherwise, the human ship would have been able to fire on her with impunity, for she could not return fire without fear of harming the Messenger whom she had come to save. The nature of her mission also required her to board the other ship, to take the healing gel to the Messenger. She suspected that the ship’s crew would be largely incapacitated from radiation poisoning, but she knew enough about humans after fighting them on Keran not to underestimate them. Her mission of mercy would not be bloodless.

“Mistress!” Ulan-Tyr suddenly called for her. “Five human vessels are breaking from low orbit and moving to intercept the Messenger’s ship!”

Li’ara-Zhurah got up from the command chair and moved closer to the tactical display. “Are these ships native to this world, of the fleet that launched the nuclear weapons?”