In Her Name: The Last War (103 page)

A few moments later and that fight was finished. “Scratch a total of four Kreelan ships,” the tactical officer reported.

“Commodore,” the flag communications officer said, “we have an incoming hail from
Southampton
.”

“Let’s have it,” Hanson said.

Braverman’s image appeared on the secondary display screen on the flag bridge. “Commodore Hanson,” he said formally, “my apologies for not making our rendezvous sooner, but we were attacked during our patrol stop at Edinburgh.”

Hanson frowned. “With all due respect, Captain Braverman,” she said, “where’s Rear Admiral Assad?” He had been designated the overall force commander when the mission had been put together, and should be taking over command of the Confederation forces here.

“Dead, ma’am,” Braverman said bluntly. “He went down with the
Bayern
. There were only seven Kreelan ships, but they concentrated their fire on her. She was lost with all hands. As the senior officer, I took command of our task force and got here as quickly as we could.”

Assad’s death left Hanson in charge. “Very well, captain,” she told him, sensing that Braverman was being overly defensive about how long it had taken him to arrive. “Moshe,” she said, trying to reassure him, “you and your people did well to get here as quickly as you did. And that was damn fine work on those enemy ships you killed on arrival.”

“Thank you, commodore,” he said, relaxing slightly. “May I inquire as to the tactical situation, ma’am? I see from your proximity to what I assume are Saint Petersburg ships that things have changed somewhat since the operations plan was drawn up.” 

 Hanson offered him a wry smile. “Indeed they have, captain,” she said. “The planetary government still seems to think we’re the invaders, but Admiral Voroshilov, who commands the fleet, has—”

“
Multiple contacts, close aboard!
” the flag tactical officer suddenly shouted. “Enemy ships!”

“Execute plan alpha!” Hanson ordered. Then, turning back to Braverman, she said hurriedly, “Captain, we’ll try to form up as soon as possible. For now, you’re in charge of your ships. Take the fight to the enemy as you see fit, but do not — repeat,
do not
— become decisively engaged or sacrifice your command. Give them hell, Moshe.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Braverman said gravely before he signed off.

Turning to her vidcom terminal and Voroshilov’s seemingly ever-present image, she said, “It looks like your plan worked, admiral.”

“
Da
,” he replied stonily. “Perhaps too well. Most of their ships emerged inside our safe area.” The Saint Petersburg Navy forces on the moon that had launched the mines had created a spherical minefield centered around one of the pre-designated jump points. At the very center was a cleared area where the human ships could jump in without fear of emerging right on top of a mine, which would be fatal to a ship. Their assumption had been that the Kreelans would jump in close by, but not quite
this
close. Some of them had appeared within a hundred meters of one or more of the human ships.

Red icons ringed the blue icons of her and Voroshilov’s ships at what was, for space combat, stone-throwing distance. Her ships and those under Voroshilov’s command were already firing, but the Kreelans weren’t firing back. They were closing in.

“Dammit,” Hanson hissed. “Admiral! They’re going to try and send boarding parties across to our ships! We’ve got to maneuver away from them!” Her ships had Marines and effective anti-boarding weapons. Voroshilov’s ships did not.

He gaped at her for only a moment, the universal reaction of commanders who had been told that the Kreelans actually boarded starships, and preferred that over simply firing at them. “Scatter your ships, commodore,” he ordered. “Lead the enemy through the minefield in as many directions as you can. We shall do the same.” Turning to someone off-screen, he barked a rapid series of commands in Russian. “We will rendezvous with you once this is over.” He paused. “It has been an honor, Commodore Hanson.
Udachi
. Good luck.”

“You, too, sir,” she said. Scattering their ships into the minefield was a desperate move. While the mines had been programmed to recognize their ships, that was something that no ship commander who wished to live very long would ever trust. The fact that mines were inherently dangerous to any ships near them, not just their designated targets, added to the adrenaline surge in her system. Turning to the fleet communications officer just as a cloud of tiny icons — warriors in armored vacuum suits — erupted from the enemy ships, she ordered, “All ships: scatter! Repeat, scatter, and prepare to repel boarders!”

Clenching the arms of her combat chair, she kept her eyes riveted to the main display screen as
Constellation
wheeled to a random bearing and surged forward into the minefield and away from the approaching warriors at flank speed, every weapon aboard blasting at the enemy ships that turned to pursue her and her sisters.

* * *

“Captain,”
Southampton’s
tactical controller called out. “Sir, you need to see this.”

Scowling, Braverman got up from his combat chair and went to stand next to the controller, looking at her console. “What the hell?” he muttered. “Is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I confirmed it. It’s a survival beacon from the
Yura
.”

The blue icon on her display flashed, calling for urgent attention. It was well astern now, but was directly along the bearing where they had engaged the Kreelan cruisers.

“Recall the data from the engagement,” he ordered. 

The woman quickly called up the ship’s logs of the sensor and weapons data, starting at their emergence point. In just a few seconds, she had forwarded it to where they had opened fire on the first Kreelan warship.

Braverman studied the information, which was now displayed on three separate screens: non-visual sensors, visual data from the ship’s external video arrays, and weapon pointing and ammunition expenditure.

“Son of a
bitch!
” he cursed. He had thought something was peculiar about the first target, but there had been no time to think or ask questions. That, however, did nothing to lessen the burden of guilt and responsibility he felt. Now, looking at the data again, he could clearly see what they had really been firing at: the Kreelan warship that was their intended target was grappled to what was clearly a Confederation cruiser. While none of the sensor data he had could tell him which one, other than that it was the newest class that had been launched, he could add two and two. The emergency transponder was coded for the
Yura
. Ichiro Sato’s ship. He had never cared for Sato, and thought he had been brought up to command level far too quickly.
But he wasn’t the one who fucked up and fired on a friendly ship, now was he?
Braverman told himself harshly. He could have made excuses for himself about the fog of war or the heat of battle, any one of a dozen valid reasons why he fired on that ship. But Braverman would never have tolerated such an excuse from one of his crew, and he certainly would never tolerate it from himself. That simply was not the kind of man he was. As soon as this battle was over, he promised himself, he would report himself to Commodore Hanson and await the inevitable court-martial.

“Are there any enemy vessels behind us?” he asked, clearing the past from his mind so he could focus on the mission at hand.

“Negative, sir,” the tactical officer replied. “We have multiple targets rising from orbit to engage us, but nothing astern.”

Braverman punched the button to activate the vidcom link at her console. “XO,” he barked. 

“Yes, sir?” the ship’s executive officer immediately responded from the ship’s alternate bridge.

“I want you to take the ship’s cutter and a team of Marines on a SAR mission,” Braverman said. SAR was short for Search And Rescue. “The first ship we fired on wasn’t one ship, it was two: a Kreelan and the
Yura
, Sato’s command, grappled together. We’ve got an emergency locator beacon, probably a beach ball, that lit up astern. Go recover it.”

“On my way, sir,” the XO replied and instantly signed off.

On the tactical display, eleven enemy ships were rising to meet him, while the rest of the Kreelan fleet in the system was after Hanson and Voroshilov.

“Come on, then,” he growled at the approaching enemy ships. “We’ll kick your asses, too.”

* * *

Pan’ne-Sharakh hurried through the antechambers of the Great Palace to the throne room, moving as fast as her ancient legs could carry her. Normally she would have
chuffed
with good humor at her pace, so slow that a sleeping warrior could move faster. There was no humor in her soul now, however. Only pain, fear, and dread.

More than any other, save the Empress, Pan’ne-Sharakh was attuned to the Bloodsong. It was a random gift of birth that she had honed over her many cycles into a tool that had served her uncommon wisdom. And none of the threads of the great song that echoed in her veins had ever been stronger than that of Tesh-Dar. Savage and primal it had always been, for that was at the core of the great priestess’s soul. But it had changed with the death of Li’ara-Zhurah, and Pan’ne-Sharakh feared that Tesh-Dar might stray from the Way, that she might fall into the Darkness that consumed those who fell from grace. While she trusted in the might and wisdom of the Empress, she had to be sure. Not only because she loved Tesh-Dar as a daughter, but because she was sure that the Empire’s greatest warrior had a greater role to play in the Way that lay ahead of Her Children than merely slaughtering humans. But to play that part, she had to keep her soul.

As Pan’ne-Sharakh entered the throne room, she paused. Even in this hour of need, the sheer grandeur of what her forebears had worked in this place was breathtaking. Located at the apex of a huge pyramid, the largest single construct their race had ever conceived, the throne room stood above the city-world of the Empress Moon. Made of transparent crystal, one could see the stars and the glowing disk of the Homeworld, above. The soaring walls, inlaid with precious jewels and metals, were decorated with tapestries that told of the birth of the Empire and the fall of Keel-Tath, the First Empress. While Her Children were born first for war, they also understood the concept of beauty, and nowhere in all the Empire was there a better example than this.

High above her, on a great dais atop a sweeping staircase of hundreds of steps, was the throne. Even with her aging eyes, she could see the Empress sitting upon it, her white hair shining in the glow of the light that shone from the Homeworld and the sun. It was a trek she had made many times in her life, but the last time had been many cycles ago. Looking at the steps before her, for once she wished for a return to her youth or a mechanical conveyance to whisk her to her destination. She had not the time to waste, but her body was not what it once was, and fantasizing that she could wish herself to the top would not get her there any faster.

The Empress, of course, knew she was here, and no doubt also knew why. And while she on rare occasion would use Her will to move one of Her Children through space and time, Pan’ne-Sharakh knew that this would not be one of those times. Like everything else that was of the Way, this was a trial, a test of self, a test of her love for the Empress.

Her face creased with grim determination, she shuffled across the enormous fresco-covered floor that led to the great steps, hoping she would survive the climb to the top.

And praying that she would not be too late.

* * *

Tesh-Dar floated free above the human world, carried now by her will and momentum more than the roiling clouds of smoke and flame that were all that was left of the human ships at the spaceport. 

While she still sensed the Bloodsong, it was like a painting devoid of color, lifeless and faded. Powerless over her. She had given in to her rage, embracing it, letting it fill her heart and mind. Her strength, her true strength, was drawn from a core of animal passion that she had always had to rigidly control. But no longer. She knew that her rage, her anger, surged from her through the Bloodsong, overwhelming many of Her Children with its power, but she no longer cared. All she wanted was to kill.

She had seen several human aircraft and a few small ships rise from the surface, trying to escape the onslaught of Her Children: she had destroyed them all with the power that boiled within her soul, blasting them with lightning, tearing them from the sky.

The city lay before her, and her mind’s eye knew where every human was. She could sense the beating of their alien hearts, almost as if she could hear them, and was eager to silence every single one. By the powers that had been passed down to her, by the sword or by claw, it did not matter. She was Death, coming for all of them.

Her wounds still bled, and a distant part of her mind realized that she would soon die if she did not seek out a healer. The rest of her, the animal that had taken over her soul, did not care. 

As she came lower to the ground, she noticed a group of warriors battling against a mass of humans in a large compound not far from the edge of the city. The place was strange: it was little more than a great open field, surrounded by several sets of fences with strange coiled wire along the top, with watchtowers along the fence line. In the center, next to a large landing pad strewn with destroyed aircraft, stood a squat, ugly structure of concrete. Not large enough in itself to house anything substantial, her second sight told her the truth: like a burrowing
kailekh
, a rare serpent on the Homeworld, the thing above ground was merely a portal to tunnels the humans had dug beneath the ground. 

She paused, considering. The fraction of her mind that remained rational managed to convince her animal consciousness that she would likely bleed to death before she could destroy the inhabitants of the city. She decided to expend her remaining wrath on these humans.

Landing gracefully ahead of the young warriors who surrounded the place, all of whom hugged the ground in fear of her, she marched toward the line of humans behind their defensive barriers. They fired their weapons at her, and she snarled as their bullets and rockets passed through her, as if she were no more than shadow and smoke.