In Her Name: The Last War (123 page)

The other children voiced their assent, and one by one told their own story of how Allison had saved each of them. By the end, Mills and the other three adults were in tears. 

One thing still wasn’t quite clear to Mills. Allison had explained it, but he still couldn’t quite believe it. “Allison, you said that the Kreelans don’t come here to your little hideout. I’m still not clear on that.”

“They don’t bother us because
she
seems to like me.”

“That’s this other warrior you mentioned at the creek when you found us?” Valentina asked. “The one who you said would get us if she wanted to?”

Allison visibly shivered. “She looks the same as the others, except she has more of the jewel or bead things hanging from the collar around her neck. Oh, and there’s some sort of round or oval thing on the front of her collar that none of the others have, and some fancy bright blue design on her chest.”

Mills and Steph simultaneously stared at one another. They had both seen another warrior with a special collar and a bright blue design on her chest armor. The warrior had beaten Mills twice, apparently purely for entertainment, and had killed the woman he loved.

“Is she big?” Mills clenched his huge fists to focus his rage. “As big or bigger than me, much taller and stronger-looking than the others?”

Allison shook her head. “No, not at all. Other than those two things, you couldn’t tell her from any of the others.” She paused. “Well, except for her eyes. They’re dead.”

“What do you mean by that?” Steph asked.

“Since the night she landed, the night she did...whatever it was that she did to me, when I felt like she was driving ice picks through my heart, I’ve seen her a number of times. She’s followed me around, watching what I do.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if to ward off a chill, even though the shelter was quite warm. “One time, when I was hunting for food in town, I went around a corner and she was right there.” She held out her arm and touched Mills on the chest. “That close. I thought, ‘That’s it, Allison. You’re dead.’ 

“But she just stood there and stared down at me. And her eyes, her face...she’s not like the others. The others have expressions, you know? I don’t know what all of them mean, but their faces change, a lot like ours do when we’re happy or sad. But looking into her face is like looking into nothing, like her eyes are empty wells that just go down forever, but there’s no water in them. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“And she just let you go that time, too?” Valentina was having as difficult a time as Mills believing it.

Allison nodded again. “Yes. I figured that I was still alive, so I’d better get moving. I could’ve just run back here, but then figured I may as well still get the food. I knew she could find me whenever she wanted. She followed me all night after that, even when I came back here, and she’s followed me around other times, too.”

“Oh, great!” Danielson blurted. “So you lead us back here so the enemy knows exactly where we are? Brilliant!”

“She already knew where you were,” Allison told him bluntly. “She was in the forest, following you.”

“How do you know that?” Mills asked her.

“Because I was following her when I saw you escape down to the creek, and I came to help you,” Allison explained. “I’ve followed her before.” Mills and the others exchanged a disbelieving glance. “No, really! I think she enjoys it, like I’m a pet or something, trotting after her. 

“Don’t get me wrong, she terrifies me, but after she followed me that first time and didn’t do anything, I decided that fair’s fair.” She paused, looking defiantly at Danielson. “I don’t like being bullied.”

Valentina covered up her smile with one hand and Steph suppressed a giggle as Danielson turned red.

Mills shook his head. “You’ve got some guts, girl. I’m not so sure about your smarts in following a warrior around like that, but I’m glad you did. You saved our lives.”

Allison beamed at the big Marine’s praise.

“But now I’m hoping you can help us solve a little problem we’ve got.”

“If I can,” she told him eagerly, nodding her head. 

“Is there anywhere in town where we might find some communications gear? An electronics shop or network node, anything like that? The kit we need to talk to the other ground teams and the fleet when it comes in was lost when our ship was destroyed. We’ve got to find another way to get in touch with them about what’s happening here.”

“Sergeant Mills?” A girl, Vanhi, Mills remembered, interrupted quietly. “Just what is happening here? What about all those people on the road that you saw? What’s going to happen to them? You’re here to help them, aren’t you?”

Mills exchanged an uncomfortable glance with the other members of the team. “Yes, love,” he told her, avoiding the question of what was going to happen to the prisoners. “We’re going to help them. But to do that, we’ve got to get the gear we need to talk to our friends.”

“The communications exchange?” Amrit, Vanhi’s brother, suggested.

Allison shook her head. “The exchange building is still there, but almost everything inside is burned and wrecked. I think our soldiers tried to destroy it.”

“That would make sense. They wouldn’t want the enemy to get access to it.” Danielson glanced at Mills, who nodded agreement.

“There’s a gadget shop in town,” Allison said slowly, her face a mask of concentration. “A place that has the kinds of things you might need. Comm units and stuff. But it’s along Main Street, right across from the town square and whatever those things are the Kreelans are building.” She looked up at Mills. “I could get there...”

“But you won’t know what we need,” Danielson finished. “And I’m in no shape to go with this fu...um, messed up arm.” 

Allison scowled at him, making it clear that she wouldn’t want him with her, anyway.

“I’ll go.” Valentina smiled at Steph. “I’m the real backup comms specialist, anyway.”

Mills nodded. He knew she was the best choice in any case, even had Danielson not been wounded. “All right, then, we’ll go in tonight. In the meantime, we’ll start keeping a lookout. If that warrior knows where we are, it’s only a matter of time before she comes for us herself or sends her dogs after us. I don’t want to be caught without any warning.”

“We’ll help!” one of the children chirped.

Mills grinned. “Is that so?” 

All the children nodded emphatically. 

“All right, then, we can always use some extra eyes and ears. I’ll take the first watch, then Steph and Danielson. Once it’s fully dark, Allison and Valentina will head into town, so you two had better get a bit of rest now.”

Later, Mills lay prone in some of the barn’s wreckage, watching an endless stream of people moving along the road, escorted by yet more enemy warriors. 

Valentina came and silently lay down next to him. A young boy, Evan, lay an arm’s length from Mills on the opposite side, facing toward the rear of the barn and the fields there, diligently watching for any enemies that might approach from the woods. 

The sun was just beginning to droop over the gentle hills to planetary west.

“You’re supposed to be getting some sleep,” Mills chided.

“Like that’s going to happen.” She held out her hand for his binoculars. “Anything new?”

He shook his head as he handed them over. “Nothing good.” He leaned closer and whispered so Evan couldn’t hear. “There’s been a constant stream of civilians being herded down the road from the north toward town. And more warriors. Christ, but there’s a lot of them.”

Valentina frowned as she looked back and forth along the procession moving slowly along the road. There were thousands of people, and their moans and cries sent a shiver down her spine. “My God, where are they going to put them all?”

“I can’t see it from here, but if you take a gander over that way,” he pointed to a small rolling hill about a kilometer away, “you can see a stretch of road rising up behind that hill just before town. None of the prisoners have passed that way, so the Kreelans are moving them off the road somewhere before that, out of sight from where we are. I’m thinking they’re turning off near where you saw all that thermal activity before we were chased down from the hill earlier. I’m wagering the Kreelans have some sort of concentration camp set up there to hold all our people until...” 

He couldn’t finish the rest. Not just because he didn’t want Evan to hear it, but because he had a hard time bearing the burden of being totally helpless when so many people were about to die. He had already seen so much death in this war, but most of those had been in combat, men and women who’d been trained and armed, who could fight back. These poor souls being marched along the road were just regular everyday people who wouldn’t stand a chance against the warriors who’d be sent into the arenas with them. 

He couldn’t do a thing about it. Nothing. And unless Valentina and Allison were successful tonight, he wouldn’t even be able to tell the fleet to land Marines here to mount a rescue operation. 

He felt Valentina’s hand on his arm.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” She understood the anguish he was feeling. While the scale had been vastly different, she had been in more than one situation when she worked as an agent for the Terran Intelligence Service where she hadn’t been able to help someone who had been in desperate trouble. Those people had died, some of them under long and agonizing torture. “Take it from me, you can’t save everyone, no matter how hard you try.”

“I know, but...” He looked away for a moment, wiping at his face, and Valentina saw the glistening of tears. 

She’d come to the conclusion over the course of the mission that there was a lot more to Mills that she had ever realized. He would have everyone believe that he was nothing but a big ape, an ignorant jarhead, but that wasn’t him at all.

“We won’t be able to save them all, Mills,” she told him, “but we’ll be able to save some, maybe most, if the fleet comes in time. That’s what you need to focus on. Not how many we’ll lose.”

Mills grunted. “And what makes you so worldly-wise, all of a sudden?”

She was silent for a moment, and he was wondering if he’d managed to insult her when she said softly, “Do you know how many people I’ve killed, Roland?” 

“Not if you’re going to add me to the list after you tell me.” It wasn’t quite as much of a joke as he might have liked, and it unnerved him that she was talking about anything related to her operations as a covert agent. It was an extraordinary measure of the trust she’d placed in him.

“I’ve killed eighty-seven human beings, not counting anyone I killed in the firefights we were in on Saint Petersburg and a few other places I won’t mention. But those eighty-seven, they were people I killed face to face. People whose names I knew. I knew everything about them, almost as if we were longtime friends. And do you know how many I’ve saved?”

“How many?”

“None.” It was her turn to look away. “Not a single one. Some of my contacts who were in danger were extracted by other agents. But my own personal salvation score? Zero.”

Mills stared at her. “You know, for someone who’s supposed to be a brilliant super-spy, you’re as dense as a bloody brick.”

“What?” Valentina turned to him, a perplexed look on her face.

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it weren’t for you. My mates and I would all be dead back in the government complex on Saint Petersburg had you not shot up half the Russians coming after us. Oh, and let’s not forget that minor miracle of how you got all of us off that rock by doing that freaky mind-meld thing with the navigation computer that left you a vegetable for six months.” He shook his head in wonder. “My God, woman. Yes, we’ll all have to answer for our sins in the end. You’ve got yours, and Lord knows I’ve got my own list of dirty deeds. But don’t ever tell me again that you never saved anyone, or I’m going to turn you over my knee and spank your bottom.”

She grinned. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Mills grinned back. “I could think of worse ways to spend my time.”

They were quiet for a while after that, turning their attention back to the stream of people marching down the road.

After a while, Valentina said, “Mills?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what I’d like?”

Mills snorted. “That’s a bit of a loaded question, dearie, but I’ll take the bait. What would you like?”

“I’d like a frozen margarita with real strawberries. On a nice beach somewhere under a cloudless sky and a warm sun. I want to be able to just enjoy myself and not be there to kill someone.” She glanced at him. “And I don’t want to be alone.”

Unable to help himself, Mills felt his jaw drop open as he turned to look at her. “Lord Almighty. Are you asking me on a date?”

“Don’t get a fat head about it,” she told him with a wry grin. “But yeah, I guess I am.”

“Bloody hell, woman,” he choked, glancing over to see if Evan heard him cursing. “I think I might take you up on that.”

“You’d better, or I’m going to do to you what I did to Danielson on the ship and you’ll be squeaking like a school girl.”

Mills had to bite his tongue to keep quiet. It wouldn’t do for the Kreelans to find them because he was laughing his head off. “Well, I guess it’s a deal, then. Assuming we get out of this mess.”

“Yeah, I guess there’s always that.” She sighed. “I guess I’ll go check on Allison to see if she’s getting any rest. I might try and close my eyes, too. Talking to you is exhausting.”

“Smart arse.” As she began to get up, he reached out and took her arm. “Just promise me you’ll be damn careful tonight. Both of you.” 

“I promise. Allison and I’ll take care of one another.” 

“Okay, then.” Mills reluctantly let her go. 

Without another word, she got up and returned to the shelter, leaving him to his worrying.

With a sigh, he turned to watch the column of people again, but instead looked up to the sky as he heard the faint but growing roar of an approaching ship.

* * *

Ri’al-Hagir, the First to Ku’ar-Marekh, masked her fear. But inside she trembled, for she knew that Death was very close. Very close indeed. She did not fear dying in itself, for that was the worthy and hoped-for ending for any warrior who served the Empress.