In Her Name: The Last War (133 page)

Steph’s left leg collapsed under her. As she fell to the ground, she could see a deep line of scarlet across her leg where one of the weapons had cut deep into her thigh. She didn’t feel any pain yet, so sharp was the blade.

Looking up, she saw Allison stop and turn back toward her. “No, Allison! Run!”

Then she fainted.

Without a thought, Allison ran back to her, falling to her knees and catching Steph by the shoulders as she slumped to the ground.

“Allison!” Mills shouted. “Get out of there! Run!”

With an agonized look on her face, Allison shook her head as she cradled Steph, trying to hold the unconscious woman’s head and shoulders out of the churned-up soil. “I can’t leave her!”

“Oh, God.” Mills saw warriors pouring through the gates from the direction of the arenas. A number of Jackson’s people tried to fight them off, but there were too many. He fired his assault rifle into the mass of aliens as Valentina ran forward to help Jackson. She tossed him over her shoulder as if he were a young child and ran back to Mills while he held the Kreelans at bay.

“Take him!” She quickly set the groaning Jackson on his feet next to Mills, who wrapped a powerful arm around Jackson’s waist as he fired the assault rifle with his other hand.

Then the rifle’s magazine ran out.

“Shit!” Mills looked helplessly at Valentina. “That was all the ammo!”

“Put me down,” Jackson wheezed. “Put me down, dammit.”

The children, who looked around wide-eyed at the cataclysm unfolding around them, made room as Mills set Jackson down.

“Grenade.” Jackson held out his hands. 

“Aye, mate.” Mills snatched the last grenade from his combat belt and handed it to Jackson. His eyes met the other man’s and held them for a long moment.

“Now get these kids out of here.” Jackson gave Mills a bloody smile as he popped the safety cap off the grenade.

“He’s right.” Valentina had to shout in Mills’s ear, as her voice was drowned out by the sonic booms of assault boats from the fleet. “You’ve got to get the children to safety.”

“No!” Mills stared at her, his heart hammering with dread. The only other woman he’d ever loved had died in front of his eyes at the hands of one of these alien beasts, and he wasn’t about to let it happen again. “I am not leaving you behind!”

“We don’t have time.” She pulled him down and kissed him hard on the mouth. Pulling away, she said, “I’ll see you on that beach someday, Mills.”

Then she was gone. Sprinting inhumanly fast, she ran to protect Steph and Allison just as they were about to be overrun. The blades of her crimson-stained swords caught the afternoon sun as a tide of howling warriors swarmed over them.

His heart a cold, dead stone in his chest, Mills gathered up the children and led them away just as Confederation assault boats roared overhead, coming in to land.

* * *

Jackson ignored the agony in his back. He could feel blood pouring from the wound. He’d been hit in the kidney. His vision was fading quickly, but he had time enough. 

Warriors had surrounded the women, and more were heading right toward him in pursuit of the fleeing civilians. 

Noticing that he was still alive, one of the aliens paused just long enough to raise her sword as the others sped around him.

“Fuck you, bitch.” Jackson smiled as he pressed the detonator with his thumb.

* * *

No other human being could do what Valentina was doing, because none had the special implants that poured adrenaline and other chemicals into her system, speeding up her reaction time, increasing her strength. 

She wasn’t invulnerable, and the warriors could have overwhelmed her had they worked together. Instead, they swept around her, Steph, and Allison to form a ring, an arena bounded by warriors, as more continued to chase after the fleeing civilians. 

The warriors took turns, seemingly at random, dashing into the makeshift arena to challenge her. One after another they came, and one after another she killed them, her swords whirling, slashing and stabbing as she danced around Allison and Steph, protecting them.

She had no idea how long she had been fighting when they stopped coming at her. Looking up from where her latest victim was collapsing to the ground, she saw that the surrounding warriors were now kneeling. 

“Valentina!” Allison was pointing. “It’s
her
.”

The warrior leader stood a few paces away, somehow having appeared out of thin air. She was staring at Valentina with her silver-flecked, vaguely feline eyes.

Raising her swords, Valentina prepared to fight.

The warrior held out her hands, and the swords were torn from Valentina’s grip, flying as if by magic to the warrior, who deftly caught them. She held them out, and another warrior dashed forward to take them. The warrior leader said something in her language, and eight warriors rose to their feet and came forward.

Valentina tensed, ready for the worst, but none of the aliens drew their weapons. Instead, six came to stand before her, briefly bowing their heads, while the other two knelt next to Steph and carefully lifted her from the ground. The ring of warriors parted as they carried her in the direction of the arenas, and the warrior leader gestured for Valentina to follow.

“Come on.” Valentina held out her blood-covered hand for Allison. 

“What are they going to do?” Allison got up and clutched Valentina’s hand, ignoring the blood.

“I think they’re going to let us live. At least for now.” The two of them followed after the warriors who carried Steph, and the six other warriors fell in behind them.

Valentina glanced back as she heard the rumble of hover engines from the assault boats in the fields beyond the woods.

The warrior leader was staring off in the same direction as another warrior came up and began to speak to her.

* * *

“My priestess.” Esah-Kuran bowed her head and saluted, raising her left fist to her right breast. “The humans land in force around us. We await your command.”

Ku’ar-Marekh knew this, of course, for beyond the obvious senses of sight and sound that told her of the human craft landing their warriors, her mind’s eye had cast about them, seeing all there was to see, knowing all there was to know. 

She saw the many warriors and the great metal machines that were such treasured prey for her warriors descend from the landing craft, even as the tide of humans who had escaped from the pen began to reach them.

“Make sure these humans,” she gestured to where the three had been taken to the
Kalai-Il
, “are well-kept until I return.” 

Then she closed her eyes and opened her mind to the Bloodsong so that her warriors would know her will.

* * *

“Marines!” Mills ran through the field from the woods, panting as he carried two of the younger children, one in each arm. 

He had reached the Marines’ defensive positions around the landing zone. The empty fields he had crossed the night before were now a beehive of activity as dozens of assault boats disgorged Marines, tanks, and other vehicles and equipment that were part of the 10th Armored Division. Hundreds of Marines were trying to gather up the panicked civilians and get them into boats that were empty of their cargos and ready to return to the carriers.

He was surrounded by Marines offering helping hands, gently taking the children and leading them to a nearby boat.

“First Sergeant Mills.” One of the Marines recognized Mills’s rank insignia and his name patch and had called it in. “General Sparks wants to see you ASAP.” 

“Where is he?” 

“There, sir.” The Marine pointed to a massive M-90 Wolverine tank about a hundred meters away that had a pennant waving wildly from a mast on the turret. “Just look for the guy wearing the biggest damn pistol you ever saw.”

“I know him.” Mills started off, but paused as a hand gripped his. 

It was Vanhi, one of Allison’s friends.

“Thank you, Mr. Mills.” Then she hugged him. He returned it, biting back the urge to burst into tears.

“Get on the boat, young lady.”

She nodded, then turned and went with the boat’s loadmaster.

Running to where Sparks’s Wolverine squatted on the field, Mills climbed up the track skirt onto the engine deck, then onto the turret. 

Sparks was kneeling on the turret roof, surrounded by his staff officers and the commanders of the 32
^nd
Armored Brigade, the first unit to hit dirt.

“Mills.” The general’s intense blue eyes glittered in the sunlight. “You did a damn fine job. A damn fine job!”

“Thank you, sir.” Mills bobbed his head in acknowledgement as he tried to bring his breathing under control. 

Sparks held up a display pad that showed a large red swath, like an intense thunderstorm on radar, that circled most of the way around the town of Breakwater, with a large red patch right in the middle of the town. “This is a thermal plot we got of the enemy from orbit. Does this match up with what you’ve seen on the ground?” With the Kreelans interfering with human technology, seemingly at will, Sparks had very little trust in what any electronic sensors told him.

“Yes, sir.” Mills pointed to a spot on the screen where the red was particularly intense. “They built some sort of temple or something in the town square, along with arenas where they were making the civilians fight them. And in the woods around the town there are thousands of warriors.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to know how many, sir, but I’d say at least five thousand. Maybe more.”

“What about the cities to the north and south?” Sparks zoomed out on the map. “Any idea of enemy concentrations there, or how many civilians may be left?”

“We weren’t able to find out anything about any other Kreelan forces, sir, but from what we heard from some of the civvies, there are still quite a few people around the cities. But it seems like most of the Kreelans are concentrated here.”

Sparks zoomed out more, with the display now showing the entire continent. “We’ve got recon boats searching all the other major population centers, but so far they haven’t reported back.”

“Sir...”

Sparks pinned him with his eyes. The general was a thin, wiry man of average height, but the intensity of his gaze commanded respect from every man and woman who encountered him. “Spit it out, first sergeant.”

“One of the warriors here, sir. The leader, has...I don’t know how to describe it without sounding like I’ve lost my mind, sir, but she’s like a bloody witch.”

“Like the one who rearranged your face on Keran and again on Saint Petersburg?”

Mills nodded. “Yes, sir, but not the same one. I don’t know much of what she can do other than what one of the civilians...” He had to bite his lip at that point, thinking of Allison’s face, looking back at him as the Kreelans swarmed over her. “...what one of the civilians told me. That she can pop out of thin air right next to you. But I believe her.”

“Is there anything I can do about this warrior except blow her to bits?”

“No, sir. I just wanted you to know.”

Sparks nodded. “Then we’ll have to hope that a frag round will do the job when the time comes.”

“There’s something else.”

Sparks stared at him.

“Valentina Sikorsky and Stephanie Guillaume-Sato were...” Mills hesitated, unable to say the word that he knew had to be said. Killed. He couldn’t say it, because doing that would have somehow made it real, and it was a reality he simply wasn’t prepared to deal with, a reality that he refused to acknowledge. 

Sparks saved him from having to cross that abyss. “Damn. I’m sorry, son.” He looked toward the town, his expression hard as the armor of the tank on which they knelt. “I guess I’ll have to inform the commodore. And Valentina…I’m sorry.”

“Yes, sir.” Mills felt himself choking up. “General, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble-”

An alarm sounded, a piercing siren that wailed from several of the boats and brought all activity in the landing zone to a dead stop. 

His comm unit chimed before his operations officer came on. “Sir, we’ve got an inbound air attack!” 

A wave of red dots appeared on the miniature tactical display Sparks was holding.

Then the sensor feed went dark and the red icons disappeared.

Disgusted, Sparks tossed the display into its bin inside the turret and keyed his comm unit. “All units, air action west, I repeat, air action west!” 

That broke the spell. Everyone in the landing zone leaped into action, trying to get the last of the Marines unloaded before cramming in the civilians. Boats began to lift off, staying low as they turned away from the approaching Kreelan ships.

The Wolverine tanks of the brigade’s armored regiment moved forward, turning to face the threat. The muzzles of their fifteen centimeter guns elevated as the crews prepared for the attack. 

The Marine infantry around them fanned out, aiming their own weapons in the same direction. Every one of them knew that their assault rifles probably wouldn’t scratch the Kreelan boats, but they would fire if he or she got the chance.

Sparks turned to Mills. “You’ve done enough here, first sergeant.” He gestured to the nearest boat. “Hop aboard and get the hell out of here.”

“Yes, sir!” 

As Sparks turned his attention to managing the battle, Mills quickly climbed down the Wolverine’s flank and headed in the direction of the assault boat. 

They’re dead
. The words kept ringing in his head as he trudged toward the boat. He was tortured with the image of Valentina disappearing into the mass of warriors, trying to defend Allison and Steph as warriors swarmed around them like water flowing past a rock in a river. 

The scene played over and over in his mind. He slowed his pace, then finally stopped, staring at the boat’s gaping hold as Marines continued to stream out of it.

You didn’t see them die
. It was an easy rationalization to make, even if it made no sense at all. Steph was down, Allison helpless beside her, and Valentina couldn’t have fought so many warriors. It was impossible. There was no reason the warriors swarming into the compound wouldn’t have killed them.