In Her Name: The Last War (27 page)

Now, on his last free evening station-side, he had spent a full two hours practicing the moves Tomonaga had taught him when the door chime rang. Then he heard the door open. Only one person had his access code. Steph.

“Hey, kid,” she called to him as she came in, the door automatically swishing closed behind her. She always called him that when they were alone, although she was only ten years older. 

Steph leaned against the wall near the door, watching as Ichiro went through the remainder of a ballet of lethal moves with his grandfather’s sword. Bare above the waist, the muscles of his upper body rippled as he slashed and thrust with the glittering weapon, and she marveled at how hard and chiseled his body had become. He hadn’t exactly been in bad shape physically when she’d first met him on the
Aurora
, but he had totally transformed himself in the last year with the help of the mysterious Tomonaga-san.
Admit it, woman
, she chided herself, trying to look away but failing,
he’s goddamn beautiful
.

After a few more moves, Ichiro sheathed the sword, making even that move graceful and deadly-looking. Holding the
katana
in both hands, he bowed his head to it, then carefully placed it on a small wooden stand that held the matched pair of swords.

“It’s too bad the Navy didn’t take you up on your suggestion to make close combat training and swordsmanship mandatory,” she sighed. “Then they’d all be hunks like you.”

Ichiro grinned at her as he toweled off the sweat. “Don’t you wish,” he quipped. “So, what’s going on?”

She folded her arms at him and gave him a look that he knew from experience meant that he’d just said something incredibly stupid. “Gee, I don’t know,” she told him, stepping up to take the towel to rub down his back. “Maybe this’ll be the last time I see you before you deploy, you moron.” She paused, then added, “Although maybe I’ll get to see you while you’re on station at the rendezvous point.”

Ichiro whipped around and took her wrists, not altogether gently. “What?” he exclaimed. “I thought you were staying back here to cover the president.” 

Steph’s career had taken off into the stratosphere after her coverage of the
Aurora
, and she had been able to pick any assignment she’d wanted. She’d chosen a lead position on the press team that covered the president, and hadn’t been disappointed by the massive battle that had been waged in the following months between the executive and legislative branches. While the fighting had only been waged in words and manipulation of governmental processes, it had been as fierce in its own way as men and women grappling on a battlefield. 

“I know, Ichiro,” she told him, reaching her hands up to touch his face, his own hands still wrapped around her wrists. “But I asked for an embed position in the expeditionary force. That’s where the action’s going to be, and I want to be in the middle of it.”

“Stephanie,” he nearly choked, looking as if he’d been sucker-punched, “you mustn’t go. Please.” He had never called her by her full name since she had told him she went by Steph.

She smiled up at him. “Trying to be Mister Chivalrous, are you?” she told him gently. “Listen, I know how to take care of myself.” She moved closer, her nose almost touching his. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Most of us won’t be coming back, Steph,” he whispered, his dark almond eyes glittering. “Maybe none of us. I don’t want...I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothing will,” she whispered before bringing her lips to his. For just a moment, he didn’t react. They had always been “just friends,” never thinking that their relationship would ever be anything more. Then he returned her kiss, tentatively at first, and then with growing passion. When Steph felt his powerful arms wrap around her, drawing her body tight against his, a wave of heat rushed through her core. Suddenly, she wished that they’d done this a long time ago. 

Without another word, Ichiro effortlessly picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Communications between ships, like everything else that was taken for granted in the normal universe, was impossible in hyperspace. But Tesh-Dar needed no machines to communicate with the warriors and shipmistresses of the fleet that now approached the end of the voyage to the human world of Keran. Distance and space were immaterial to the Bloodsong that linked her with the billions of her sisters and to the Empress. It was not the same as the spoken word, but Her will was clear. War was upon them.

Tesh-Dar thought back to the time before her fleet was launched, to the gathering of the warrior priestesses and mistresses of the guilds and castes on the Empress Moon. Orbiting above the Homeworld, the Empress Moon was the home of the Imperial City and dwelling place of the Empress, a physical monument to Her power. In the heart of the city lay the Great Tower, atop which was the throne room. Kilometers high in terms of human measure, the Great Tower was thousands of years beyond anything humans could build, yet it had been created by Kreelan hands untold centuries before. The throne room itself surpassed any human’s imagination of magnificence: larger than all the palaces ever built by humankind and enclosed in a pyramidal ceiling of diamond-hard crystal, the room itself was a breathless work of art with giant frescoes and tapestries telling the great tale of the First Empress and the Unification.

This gathering was the first of its kind in many great cycles of the Empress Moon about the Homeworld, for this was one of the rare events that affected the entire race of
Kreela
. Upon the hundreds of steps to the great throne stood representatives of all the castes of Her Children, from the lowliest bearers of water to Tesh-Dar herself, greatest of the Empire’s warriors. It was a trek the Empress made, from step to step, taking into account the needs of each and every caste, of all of Her Children from the lowliest to the mighty. 

On this special day, She sat upon the throne as Her Children knelt before Her, Tesh-Dar foremost among them, kneeling upon the first step from the throne.

“My Children,” the Empress began, Her voice carrying clearly across the great expanse of the throne room to the multitudes who knelt below, the crews and warriors of the ships that were about to go into battle against the humans, “today is a day that long shall be remembered in the Books of Time. For once again we have found a race worthy of our mettle, an alien species that in flesh is like us in many ways, but is yet soulless. Make their blood burn, My Children, in the fires of war. For if their blood sings to us, they may be saved. If it does not, then let them perish as animals without knowing the light or the love that awaits us among the Ancient Ones.

“You are led this day,” the Empress went on, “by Tesh-Dar, high priestess of the Desh-Ka and a living legend of the sword. Thrill to the song of her blood in battle, My Children, and great honor shall be yours.” She paused, and Tesh-Dar could feel a warm wind stir in her soul as the Empress said, “So has it been, so shall it forever be. Let the Challenge begin.”

“In Thy name, let it be so,” Tesh-Dar echoed along with the thousands below her.

Returning her thoughts to the present, Tesh-Dar watched the globe of the human world they sought in a twin of the energy capsule they had sent back with the Messenger. On and above the surface of the planet, fierce battles raged, a simulacrum of what was to begin only moments from now. The great priestess sat in her command chair, her talons scoring the metal of one of the armrests as she absently drummed her fingers on it. She had no idea what awaited them in the system, and her body tingled with eager anticipation at what they might find. Had her instincts been right, and the Messenger well-chosen? Did a war fleet await them, or would these
humans
succumb to utter obliteration because they refused to rise to battle?

She was not concerned about dying or even her entire fleet being destroyed, as long as it was lost in battle against a worthy adversary. For that would accomplish what she and her sisters lived and died for: to honor their Empress in battle. In the millennia-long interludes when they had no external enemies to fight, Her Children sought honor through combat in the multitude of arenas throughout the Empire, in ritual battles that were rarely fought to the death. 

That was why this contest brought such a sense of excitement to Tesh-Dar and the warriors she led: this was not simply a ritual contest, but truly
war
. She could imagine no more terrible, no more glorious pursuit, and her blood raged with expectant fire. 

Holding her breath in anticipation, she watched as the globe of the human world quickly began to darken...

* * *

What to do with the artifact had sparked a long and fierce debate throughout the Terran defense community, all the way up to the president. Some had wanted to keep it in Earth space, both to study and to use as an indicator of the progress of the battle in hopes that what would be reflected on the globe after the attack began would show what was really happening, and thus provide real-time intelligence. Others argued that it would make more sense for the expeditionary force to have the artifact for the very same reasons. 

The decision had eventually wound up on the president’s desk. She took less than thirty seconds to decide. “Send it with the fleet,” she ordered as commander-in-chief. “If it provides any sort of warning, they’ll need it a lot more than we will. It won’t do us any good when it would take us a week and a half to get ships there. Assuming we had any more to send.”

Once that had been determined, others raised concerns about whether it was a bomb. But after a great deal of discussion that essentially went nowhere, Admiral Tiernan decided that if it had been some sort of weapon, the Kreelans could have used it to good effect long before. He ordered that a special instrumentation enclosure be built aboard the flagship to record any emissions or changes in the artifact, and a close watch had been kept every moment since the fleet had jumped from Earth space. 

The fleet had gathered at a point that was a two-hour hyperspace jump from Keran. That was as close as they felt they could come without alerting the colony or the French fleet in-system and creating a diplomatic mess. The Keran and French governments knew, of course, that the Terran expeditionary force had left Earth space, but as long as it stayed clear of the Keran system, no one was likely to complain too loudly.

Admiral Tiernan was now on the flag bridge of the heavy cruiser
Ticonderoga
. The flag bridge was a special compartment, separate from the ship’s bridge, that had all the systems his staff needed to help him control the fleet’s operations. 

“What the hell?” someone yelped “Something’s happening!” 

Tiernan snapped his head up to look at the three-dimensional image of the alien orb that was being projected on one of the flag bridge view screens. The globe was quickly darkening, the scene of a world at war being swallowed by infinite black. Then it started to shrink. But it didn’t appear to be just getting smaller. It looked more like it was moving away from them. Tiernan thought it was a trick of the view screen display, but wasn’t sure.

“What’s happening to it?” He asked one of the battery of scientists who had been monitoring the artifact. 

“Admiral...” the lead scientist replied, then paused as he conferred with the others. “Sir, this is impossible...”

“Dammit, man, what’s happening?” 

“It’s moving away from us, sir,” the man said, shaking his head. In the view screen, the globe was now the relative size of a marble, and growing smaller by the second. “It can’t be doing what the instruments are saying,” he said, looking up at Tiernan with a helpless expression, “but it is. And it’s accelerating-”

“Damn!” someone in the background shouted as a thunderous boom echoed from the instrumentation chamber. 

“What was that?”
Ticonderoga’s
captain interjected worriedly. “Did that thing explode?” The ship’s executive officer was already moving a damage control party in. They weren’t taking any chances on something that, even after all this time, was still a complete unknown.

“No...” the scientist said, shaken. “That was a sonic boom from within the chamber from displaced air. The globe just...vanished.”

* * *

Amiral
Jean-Claude Lefevre stood in a moment of tense quiet on the flag bridge of the heavy cruiser
Victorieuse,
the flagship of the
Alliance Française
fleet that had been deployed to Keran. Because of the prevailing political conditions, the deployment had been conducted under the guise of joint exercises with the Keran Navy, although everyone knew the cover explanation was a farce. Lefevre twisted his mouth into an ironic grin: any one of his five squadrons, with a total of one hundred and fifty-three naval vessels, was larger than the entire Keran fleet in terms of tonnage. And when one considered that most of the Keran ships were small corvettes with little real combat capability, the “joint” label became rather ludicrous. Nonetheless, the Alliance had taken the Terran information of an alien threat seriously, and Lefevre was trying to do the same. 

Unfortunately, he was terribly frustrated by the total lack of intelligence information. His government believed the possibility of an alien attack was credible, as difficult as he himself found it to believe. But he had no idea of what size force he might be facing, where they might appear in the system, or even what their objective might be, other than the occupation of Keran. And if any of the information he had received about the enemy’s technical capabilities were true, his ships would be so grossly outclassed that the presence of his fleet, the largest assembled since the St. Petersburg war, would be little more than a token gesture of defiance.

The only concrete information he had was when the attack was to take place. The Terrans had some sort of device that they believed was a countdown timer, an artifact from these so-called “Kreelans.” Terran military authorities provided Avignon’s military attaché on Earth with a digital countdown timer that would approximate the time left, calibrated to the changes shown by the alien device. The time remaining on that digital timer was displayed on every bridge in the Alliance fleet, and he now watched it closely as it wound down to zero.