In Her Name: The Last War (101 page)

* * *

As Sato woke up, he felt wonderful. It was not simply that he was still living and breathing, but he felt truly alive, his body completely refreshed. 

Opening his eyes, he saw that there was a Kreelan kneeling in front of him, head bowed, and with sudden clarity he remembered what had happened. She had used the awful goo that the Kreelans he had encountered on first contact had used to heal him, to eliminate the radiation poisoning. It would also have “fixed” anything else that was wrong with his body, something that was far, far beyond the dreams of modern human medical science.

He sat up, and she raised her eyes to meet his. He had not come across this warrior at Keran, but she obviously knew him. They all seemed to. It had been maddening during the battle of Keran, when he faced a group of warriors aboard his now-dead destroyer, and they had simply knelt before him as this warrior was now. He had been so enraged that he had wanted to kill them all, and they would have let him. In fact, it had almost seemed as if they wanted him to kill them. In the end, despite all that he had gone through, all the Kreelans had done, he couldn’t. He simply was not capable of killing in cold blood, even the aliens who had invaded the human sphere.

“Captain,” he heard a voice rasp weakly.

With a shock, he saw Bogdanova on the deck, looking up at him with glassy eyes.

“No,” he moaned, suddenly noticing the state of the bridge crew, which he knew would be reflected in the rest of his people. They were dead or dying. All of them. “Bogdanova!” He got up and made his way toward her, and the Kreelans parted to let him pass, the group of surrounding warriors melting and flowing to reform around him where he knelt next to Bogdanova. “I’m going to get you out of here,” he promised her fervently, holding her hand and brushing the hair from her eyes. Her skin was cool, far too cool, to his touch. She had seemed to be faring better than many of the others, but the radiation poisoning had clearly caught up with her. She was dying, as was the rest of his crew. “I’m going to get you out of here, all of you. You’re going to be okay.”

Turning to the warrior, he pointed to the slowly pulsating mass of goo in the tube next to her, then at Bogdanova, then the other members of the bridge crew. “Please,” he pleaded with her, “help them. Save my crew.”

The warrior gestured toward him, then the goo, holding it up for him to inspect more closely. It wasn’t the grotesque purple and pink color he remembered from the first time he had been subjected to it. This specimen was clearly damaged or diseased, leprous in appearance. 

“Can’t you get more?” he demanded, pointing at the goo, then at Bogdanova again. “Goddammit,” he shouted angrily, “you saved me, why can’t you save them?”

The Kreelan simply stared at him, her silver-flecked feline eyes fixed on his. He had no idea if there was no more of the healing substance to be had, if she refused to get more, or if she simply had no idea what he was asking. 

He suddenly felt a fiery rage building inside, a manifestation of his complete helplessness and his fear that, as on his first voyage when humanity had made contact with the Kreelans, he would again be left alone, the sole survivor of his crew. It was a possibility that he could not, would not accept.
Not again
, he thought bitterly.
Please, not again
.

His attention was brought back to Bogdanova as she squeezed his hand, her grip little stronger than an infant’s. 

“They saved you, Ichiro,” she whispered. He and Bogdanova had been together since before the battle of Keran, and while they had never been anything more than friends and shipmates, it tore his heart out to see her like this. Tears welled up in his eyes as he watched the life slip away from her. She smiled one last time. “I’m glad they did...”

Then she was gone. 

Ignoring the Kreelans, Sato picked her up and held her in his arms, tears flowing freely. “No,” he moaned. “God, why do you hate me so much?”

He was still weeping when the ship was suddenly torn apart.

* * *

“Direct hit!” cried the tactical officer aboard the
CNS Southampton
as her shells slammed into the Kreelan warship at point blank range. About twice the size of a heavy cruiser and already badly damaged, it was an easy mark for their first target upon emergence in the Saint Petersburg system. It had an extremely odd configuration, but no one noticed in the heat of the moment: if it was Kreelan, you shot first and didn’t bother to ask questions.

Too goddamn bad for you
, Captain Moshe Braverman, the
Southampton’s
captain, thought savagely as the ship’s engines exploded, sending what was left of the forward hull spinning away. He turned his attention to the other three Kreelan warships that were close aboard. It had been only blind luck — whether it was good or bad depended on your point of view — that had put their task force’s emergence point right on top of the Kreelans.
Southampton
was assigned to the second flotilla of cruisers that was supposed to have rendezvoused with Hanson’s force before jumping into the system to take the nuclear weapons away from Saint Petersburg and to defend Riga. Unfortunately, they and their escorting squadron of destroyers had been ambushed at Edinburgh by Kreelan raiders, who had put up enough of a fight to delay the task force’s arrival until now. Braverman certainly hadn’t expected to find Kreelans here, as well, but he had made sure that everyone had been fully prepared for the unexpected.

After blowing
Southampton’s
first target into pieces, Braverman ordered his tactical officer to shift fire to one of the other Kreelan warships that were furiously fighting back. All three of them were making full speed toward the one that
Southampton
had just finished off, which put them right in line with Braverman’s guns.

“Fire!” he ordered, and the ship thundered as the main batteries blasted another salvo of twenty-centimeter shells at their next target. “Anti-boarding, units, stand by,” he ordered as the enemy ships drew closer. He had been at Keran and had seen the devastation Kreelan boarding parties could wreak upon a ship, and he had no intention of letting that happen to
Southampton
. Just as another Kreelan cruiser exploded, he said, “Continue firing. Let’s show these Kreelan bitches how it’s done.”

Blazing away at the remaining pair of Kreelan ships,
Southampton
and her sisters sailed by the remains of
CNS Yura
and the Kreelan warship that had been bound to her.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Tesh-Dar was enjoying the challenge posed by the human warrior. While she could easily have killed him, giving him a chance such as this to fight brought greater glory to the Empress, and also served as a useful lesson for her warriors, who watched the combat with rapt attention.

She had noticed the second human warrior approaching, of course, but was unconcerned: two of them would pose a more interesting contest, especially since the second human had drawn a knife. Tesh-Dar had no intention of drawing a weapon other than those her body possessed, but she might consider indulging herself in the use of her talons. Her warriors did not interfere, for they knew that two humans, a dozen, could not harm a priestess of the Desh-Ka.

After blocking a blow to her face by the human male, she was just preparing to make a counter-strike when there was a terrible surge in the Bloodsong, one of pain and fear from a dozen among the billions of spiritual melodies.

“Li’ara-Zhurah,” she gasped, feeling as though a bolt of lightning had pierced her heart. She staggered with shock, nearly falling to her knees. The human warrior wasted no time, throwing himself upon her, but she brutally shoved him away.

Then she was seared by white hot pain as the second human warrior, about whom she had completely forgotten as she considered Li’ara-Zhurah’s plight, plunged her knife into Tesh-Dar’s back, just below her armored backplate.

* * *

“Emmanuelle,” Mills shouted, “no!”

It was too late. He had seen her rush from the cover of the downed cutter toward him, but had been unable to wave her back as he staggered back to his feet after the Kreelan had knocked him to the ground. And now, just as the enemy warrior mysteriously stumbled, temporarily losing her focus on the fight, Sabourin had dashed forward the last few meters, her combat knife held at the ready.

Mills threw himself at the warrior, trying to hold her and keep her from turning on Sabourin. Even as addled as she clearly was, however, she was still far too strong for him. With an angry growl, she flung him half a dozen meters across the tarmac, where he landed hard, breaking his right arm and scraping his face on the rough concrete. “Emmanuelle,” he cried desperately. “
Get back!
”

* * *

The Messenger’s ship suddenly exploded around them, the force flinging warriors and humans alike across the bridge as the hull was torn apart. The lights flickered, then went out, plunging the command deck into total darkness. The artificial gravity failed, leaving the living and the dead flying through the compartment like ricocheting bullets before they were sucked into the screaming torrent of the ship’s air as it vented into space through the shattered hull.

Sato flailed his arms and legs, trying desperately to find something to cling to as he was sucked toward the bridge hatchway, but in the total and utter darkness it was impossible. His lungs felt like they were about to burst, and he forced himself to exhale to relieve the pressure. It wouldn’t matter in another few moments, he knew, but that is what he had been trained to do, and that is what he did.

His leg slammed into something hard, making him gasp with pain, his lungs venting what little air they had left. For just an instant while he tumbled, he could see down the passageway from the bridge: ten meters down the passageway,
Yura’s
hull was simply gone. There was nothing left of the rest of the ship, and he could see the stars whirling outside as the chunk of her that he was on spun out of control.

Steph
, he thought.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I won’t be coming home...

A clawed hand suddenly grabbed his arm like a vice, and he felt himself being pulled against the quickly subsiding rush of air. Before he could react, he was forcibly stuffed head-first into something that felt like a bag made of metallic cloth. He struggled, his lungs totally out of oxygen now, but the owner of the clawed hands had both strength and leverage. The Kreelan, whichever it was, finished cramming his body in and sealed his malleable sarcophagus shut.

* * *

Li’ara-Zhurah was in agony. Her punctured lung had collapsed and one of her legs had shattered when she had been flung across the compartment when the ship’s aft section exploded. She realized that more human ships must have come, and had fired on her abandoned ship, not realizing that it was tied up to one of their own.

Yet in defeat, she could still find victory. Even though her warriors had perished, sucked into the vacuum of space, the Empress had graced her one last time, for she had found a spot to anchor herself near the hatch leading from the command compartment. As the air howled into space, taking everything in the compartment with it that was not locked down, the human ship had automatically released what she knew must be survival devices, cloth-like bags that probably had emergency air supplies and more inside them. Even without the ship’s lighting, she could see quite well by the starlight that entered the compartment from the torn hull behind them. She had snatched one of the survival devices as it sailed past her, careful not to puncture the device with her talons. Holding it between her thighs, ignoring the pain in her broken leg, she pulled the Messenger from the airflow as he passed her. She had to wait a moment until the air was nearly gone before she could stuff his struggling body into the safety device, hoping it was smart enough to function automatically. 

With one final effort, she forced his feet through the opening in the bag, then sealed the flap shut behind him.

* * *

It’s a beach ball
, Sato thought.
I’m in a beach ball
. They were life preservers in space, cheap but effective devices that were stored in every compartment of the ship in case the hull was breached. While they had a long-winded official designation, the spherical survival bags were traditionally called “beach balls” because of their shape. 

As soon as the Kreelan sealed him in, a small tank filled the beach ball with life-giving air, its shape snapping from a formless bag into a tight sphere. An emergency beacon began to transmit, and a set of small lights came on, providing him with gentle illumination of the ball’s interior, along with bright lights on the exterior to help rescuers see it. A section of the ball was transparent, allowing him to see out.

And there, in the beach ball’s external lights, was the face of the warrior, looking in at him. She placed a hand against the transparency, and he raised his hand to meet hers.

“Why?” he asked. “Why me?”

But there was no answer. She took her hand away and reached around the back of her neck, releasing her collar. She attached it to one of the handholds on the outside of the beach ball, and with one final look at him, she let him go.

* * *

The living metal of Li’ara-Zhurah’s collar would normally never have unclasped until she was dead, but the collar knew in its own way that she had reached the end of her Way in this life; all that remained was for the spirits of her and her unborn child to leave the dying vessel that had carried them. She watched as the ship’s last remaining breath of air carried the Messenger into space. 

May thy way be long and glorious
, she thought one last time before closing her eyes.

Willing her body to relax, she focused on the Bloodsong of her child, calming it. For even the unborn had a place in the Afterlife, and together the two of them crossed the infinite bridge from the darkness to the light.