In Her Name: The Last War (114 page)

A warrior who stood in front of the formation bellowed a command, and the warriors fell silent and stood ramrod-straight.

Allison looked up as she heard the growing roar of an approaching shuttle, and watched with slitted eyes as it settled to the grass in the square, its hover engines blowing dust and debris in a swirling cloud that swept through the Kreelan ranks.

As the shuttle’s engines spun down, a ramp extended from the rear. Allison had a clear view, as the ramp faced directly toward her, and watched in frightened awe as the Kreelan warriors knelt and hammered their right fists against their left breasts as one, the sound of their armored gauntlets against their chest armor echoing through the square.

* * *

Ku’ar-Marekh stepped down the shuttle’s gangway into the smoke-shrouded square. She had chosen to arrive in the shuttle because she knew that many of the warriors found her more accustomed means of appearing out of thin air…disturbing. 

She looked upon the ranks of kneeling warriors with silver-flecked eyes, her gaze taking in everything, missing nothing. 

Unlike the peers who knelt before her, the porcelain-smooth blue skin of her body bore not a single scar. Scars were considered a prize among her people, trophies of combat or great deeds done in service of the Empress. Ku’ar-Marekh had seen more than her share of battle from the time she was a young
tresh
learning the Way of Her Children, and had gathered an impressive collection of scars through the cycles before she had become a priestess. 

But the Change that took place when her mentor had passed on her powers to Ku’ar-Marekh had stripped her skin bare of her trophies. While she still wore a sword and dagger, and three
shrekkas
on her left shoulder, the powers she had inherited when she became a priestess had made combat by sword and claw largely irrelevant. 

She looked out upon the warriors the Empress had put in her care, and could barely see them through the swirling dust kicked up by the shuttle’s engines. 

With a gentle wave of her hand, the gusts of air stilled, and the tiny particles fell to the ground in a silent rain. Some of the warriors bowed their heads even further, for they could sense the power of her spirit in their blood like a great, frigid wind.

Ku’ar-Marekh could of course sense the warriors, but she also sensed something else, and stopped at the bottom of the ramp, casting her second sight into the world around her.

A human.

While the blood of the animals did not sing as did that of Her Children, priestesses such as Ku’ar-Marekh could see beyond the senses of the flesh. She turned to stare at the creature, which cowered in the shadows of a nearby building. It was plainly visible to Ku’ar-Marekh’s eyes, for her race could see well in the dark. She knew that the warriors could only have overlooked the tiny human simply because it posed no challenge to their skills. Killing it would have brought no honor to the Empress, and no doubt they thought it better to leave it die of starvation.

Ku’ar-Marekh was not concerned with honor, but thought instead that killing the human would bring the Empire one step closer to exterminating these unworthy animals from the universe. Its blood did not sing, so it could not be the One the Empress so eagerly sought.

Staring at the creature, Ku’ar-Marekh reached out with her mind, seeking the human’s heart. She could feel it, beating rapidly with fear in the tiny chest, and in her mind she imagined her fist gripping the pulsating organ, her talons sinking into the muscle. Then she began to squeeze...

* * *

Allison felt a shiver pass through her as the warrior walked down the ramp. The Kreelan looked much the same as the others, but there was something about this one that was different. She didn’t know why, but a sudden surge of fear swept through her. 

The alien stopped and turned to stare right at her. 

She can see me!
Allison realized, and her stomach fell away into a dark abyss as terror took hold and she turned to run.

It was then that she felt an uncomfortable pressure in her chest. She gasped as the sensation turned into icy needles that speared her heart, and she collapsed to the ground, gasping in agony.

She felt as if her heart was being torn, still beating, from her chest.

* * *

“My priestess?” Ri’al-Hagir said quietly. She was to serve as the First to Ku’ar-Marekh, to act as her right hand in all things. She had never before met the priestess, although she had heard many fearful tales from other warriors, and of course could sense the priestess through the Bloodsong. 

Ri’al-Hagir glanced at where the human child writhed, perplexed as to why one such as Ku’ar-Marekh, who stood twelfth from the throne among all the souls in the Empire, would trifle with such a thing. 

“We decided to leave the pups be,” she explained as the human writhed in torment. “We have hopes that those that are resourceful may survive to be warriors worthy of our attention, as the adult human animals of this planet have been.”

For a moment she was unsure if Ku’ar-Marekh had heard her words, for the attention of the priestess remained fixed on the human child, whose struggles were rapidly weakening. Ri’al-Hagir could sense the power flowing from the priestess, and was not so proud to admit, at least to herself, that it caused her fear such as battle never had.

Then, with a barely audible sigh, the priestess turned to look at her, and Ri’al-Hagir quickly lowered her gaze. 

“I meant no offense, my priestess.”

“Had any been taken, you would now be with our ancestors in death.” Ku’ar-Marekh barely breathed the words, but every warrior kneeling before her heard them. Each and every one bowed her head even lower. In a louder voice, cold as any machine could be, she went on, “However, I honor your wisdom. If such as that can grow to pose a challenge to us, then I shall allow it to live.”

* * *

Allison heaved a desperate gasp of air into her lungs as the icy spikes that had been crushing her heart disappeared. She lay on the hard pavement of the alley, her body wracked with tremors as her heart sluggishly returned to its life-sustaining duty. 

She managed to turn on her side just before she vomited. 

Looking up, spitting the awful taste from her mouth, she could see the Kreelan who had come on the shuttle, moving through the ranks of warriors, who still knelt before her. 

“Get up,” Allison told herself. She was afraid that if she didn’t leave now, paralyzed by pain and fear, she never would. “Get up!”

She pushed herself to her knees, and then to her feet, leaning against the outside wall of the market for support. With unsteady steps she went to where she had hidden her backpack and hoisted it onto her shoulders, wincing at the weight. 

After she’d gone a short way down the alley, Allison looked one last time at the Kreelans. 

The newly-arrived warrior was staring at her. She pulled her lips back in a silent snarl that revealed a set of glistening ivory fangs.

Allison turned and ran.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

“We’re ready.”

Those simple words, spoken by Fleet Admiral Phillip Tiernan, commander of the Confederation Navy, sent a wave of excitement through every person sitting in the briefing room in the Presidential Complex. 

At the head of the conference table sat President Natalie McKenna. The dark skin of her face that was a gift of her African heritage was deeply lined from stress and worry, but the hard look from her dark eyes was proof of indefatigable determination to defeat the Kreelan Empire and save her people.

“Go ahead, admiral.” McKenna nodded. “Let’s hear it.”

“Yes, Madam President.” Tiernan turned to the wall-sized display at the front of the room that showed a star map of the human sphere. Not all human-settled worlds had yet joined the Confederation, but there were very few holdouts after the latest wave of Kreelan invasions. “Just to recap the strategic situation, there are now a total of eighteen colonies currently under attack by forces of the Kreelan Empire. Only one, Keran, where the enemy struck us first, has been completely...assimilated.” 

According to the last intelligence information the Navy had been able to obtain, the Kreelans had likely exterminated every human soul on Keran, then had begun to terraform the planet to better suit their needs. 

What had happened there had driven home to everyone in the government that humanity was not simply in a battle for territory, riches, or ideology. Humanity was fighting for its very existence.

“The other planetary campaigns,” Tiernan continued, “are essentially long-term battles of attrition. From what we can tell of the enemy’s intentions, it’s basically to try and kill as many of us at close quarters as possible. They don’t seem interested in simply taking our worlds from us, because we know from the information we gained during the first contact encounter that they’re radically more advanced than we are, or at least some portion of their Empire is. Our assessment is that if they wanted to simply take something from us, or just wipe us out, they could. But for some reason, they’re taking their time about it.”

“So, you’re saying we have no chance against them?” Secretary of Trade Raul Hernandez asked the question of Tiernan, but his eyes darted to the President.

“Not at all, Mister Hernandez. Perhaps the best thing for me to say is that we simply don’t understand their intentions. We understand some of their potential capabilities from what Commodore Sato,” he nodded to a man with Japanese features who sat at the table, looking absurdly young compared to the other flag officers around him, “brought back from first contact, but we don’t understand why they do what they do, or what their strategic goals are, other than killing us one by one.” He looked around the room, finally resting his gaze on the president. “They’ve kicked us hard, and if they wanted to they could take us down. 

“But I didn’t come here,” he went on, his voice deepening with resolve, “to tell you that we don’t have a chance, or that we’re just going to roll over and let them have their way.”

Hernandez, clearly not convinced, simply nodded and rested his chin on his hands, focusing on the map of humanity’s outposts among the stars, eighteen of which were displayed in red.

“What’s the target, admiral?” McKenna asked.

“Alger’s World.” 

The screen zoomed in on one of the red-flagged planets, and data appeared in a pop-up. It was a rare cousin of Earth, capable of supporting human life without domes or respiration equipment. It had a population of just over five million, with a planetary economy that was based primarily on agriculture. Before the arrival of the Kreelans, Alger’s World had been a quiet, modestly successful colony in a location that had no particular strategic significance.

“Why Alger’s World?” 

The question had come fromVice President Laurent Navarre, who was leaning forward, studying the information on the screen. The former ambassador of the Francophone Alliance to the Terran Government, he had been the logical choice for McKenna’s right-hand man. He had been of inestimable help to her in both forging the Confederation government and in setting in motion the largest industrial mobilization in the history of humankind to provide the weapons and material with which to fight humanity’s enemy. “Not to belittle the suffering of any of our citizens, but Alger’s World doesn’t strike me as a strategic target. Its entire population is less than some of the major cities on some of the other besieged worlds, and it has no industrial capacity to speak of. I do not ask this to sound heartless, admiral, Madam President,” he turned and nodded his head to McKenna before turning back to Tiernan, “but what do we gain strategically by mounting a major operation there?”

“In short, our plan for Alger’s World gives us the best possible chance of winning a decisive victory, Mr. Vice President.” Turning to McKenna, he went on, “Madam President, your orders to me were to find a way to strike back at the enemy and give the Confederation a success in the wake of so many invasions. The battles being fought on every planet other than Alger’s World are battles of attrition that we will likely lose in the end.” He paused, glancing momentarily at a naval officer who was new to the Confederation Navy, but who wore the stars of a full admiral. “As an example, I’m sure Admiral Voroshilov can tell you that we have very little hope of mounting a successful counteroffensive against the Kreelan forces on Saint Petersburg.”

“Our world is lost.” Lavrenti Voroshilov confirmed Tiernan’s statement without preamble. He had been the commanding officer of the Saint Petersburg Navy when Confederation forces had come to confiscate his government’s illegal nuclear weapons, and he had fought the Confederation Navy before the Kreelans had arrived. 

Now, Saint Petersburg was a charnel house, and the surviving units of his fleet had been merged with that of the Confederation. Most of Saint Petersburg’s surviving population, those the Confederation had been able to evacuate, had been sent to the colony of Dobraya, where even now a massive industrialization program was underway to help build more ships that the Confederation needed to survive. 

“We could send in the entire fleet and every Marine, and still we would lose. The battle is not over, but it has already been decided.”

Tiernan nodded, his expression grim. “The other larger colonies under attack are in similar straits. In a two years, if we can ramp up production of the new ship designs fast enough and expand the Marine Expeditionary Forces as rapidly as our plans are calling for, we could think about trying to take back a world like Saint Petersburg. Now...” He shook his head. “We had to choose a smaller colony that had not been completely overrun, did not have an enormous number of Kreelan warriors, and was still central enough to our primary fleet elements that we could mass an overwhelming number of ships quickly, get the job done, and then get them back on station as rapidly as possible. We’ve been waiting for this opportunity for months, and Alger’s World is it. We don’t expect that a victory there is really going to hurt the Kreelans in a strategic sense, but it will give us some good news to tell the people.”