In Her Name: The Last War (6 page)

When he was a young boy and his father was particularly displeased with him, which was often, he would lock Ichiro in a tiny closet in their apartment. His father had gone to great trouble to ensure that there was enough air, but that absolutely no light penetrated his son’s prison. And there Ichiro would have to sit, silently, until his father chose to release him. If the boy made so much as a whimper, his father would drag him out and beat him and then throw him in for even longer. Breaking the unwritten law of female submission that was typical for many families on Nagano, his mother had tried to stop her husband once. He had beaten her savagely, and she had been greatly shamed when she had to go out in public. Until the bruises healed. After that...

Ichiro shook himself.
The past is gone
, he told himself.
Focus on now
. Reaching into his tunic with a shaking hand, he removed the tiny flashlight he always kept with him. He squeezed it to turn it on, but nothing happened. Like everything else electrical in the ship, it was dead.

He felt a wave of panic rise like bile in his throat.

“Ichiro, are you okay?” a disembodied voice asked quietly from the darkness. He suddenly found a comforting hand on his arm. It was Anna Zalenski, the senior of the three midshipmen. Ichiro was a second year at the academy, she was a fourth year. He felt her hand move down to take his. Ashamed that he needed such comfort, he nonetheless returned the reassuring squeeze she gave him. He also silently thanked her for not bombarding him with any reassuring
it’ll be all right
platitudes.

He got his breathing under control. He told himself firmly that it would indeed be all right. The captain would know what to do.

A burst of what was no doubt a very poetic curse in Chinese filled the compartment as Petty Officer Yao struggled in the dark to get the hatch from auxiliary engineering open. While China and Japan on Earth had never exactly gotten along famously, Ichiro had taken an immediate liking to Yao Ming. It was a feeling that was echoed by the older enlisted man toward the young midshipman, although Yao would never have publicly admitted it. A human encyclopedia of curses (in Mandarin, of course, with happily provided translations into standard English, which had come to be known simply as “Standard”) who always wore a smile, Yao was also a genius with computers. He had been offered the chance to go to officer candidate school numerous times, but had politely declined. “If I did that,” he had said in his very formal Standard grammar, “I can no longer do that at which I am best.” The logic was irrefutable. He had no higher ambitions than to be just what he was. 

Not surprisingly, his post was in the computer operations center, which itself was separate from the physical computer core, down toward the engineering section. And since Ichiro and Zalenski had demonstrated very high aptitudes for applied computing, it had only made sense for the captain to assign them to Yao as a mentor. “Just don’t repeat anything he teaches you in Mandarin in a bar,” the captain had warned them with a smile, “or you’ll wind up with somebody swinging a chair at your head.”

Yao had taken on the youngsters eagerly, teaching them all he could and enjoying their company immensely. Over the six months they had been together, the three had become close friends (although Ichiro still hid his feelings). The midshipmen reminded Yao of his own children, whom he missed terribly.

The compartment suddenly began to glow as if it were radioactive, and Yao uttered another passionate stream of expletives. 

Ichiro could see him now, crouched down by the door. The access panel was open, and he carefully cranked the handle a few times, opening the door just a hair.

“I wished to verify that the passageway was still holding atmosphere,” he told them, almost as an aside. “I had not heard any sounds of decompression, but one may never be too careful.”

He began to vigorously crank the handle, and the hatch began to smoothly open. 

Ichiro made to get out of his chair (Yao always insisted that both midshipmen strap in for every jump) when the older petty officer admonished him, “Remain in your seat, please, young sir.” It was as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

“Right, Ming,” Ichiro said sheepishly, calling Yao by his given name as he relaxed back into his combat chair. He noticed Anna smiling at him, and a hot flush of embarrassment crept up his neck as he realized they were still holding hands. With a shy smile, he squeezed her hand once more and then released it. He saw her smile back.

“Ah!” Yao exclaimed suddenly as the gravity returned. He was already in a semi-crouch next to the panel, holding himself in place with one hand braced against the access panel while he cranked the door open with the other. His feet flexed as they took up his weight, almost as if he had been somehow prepared for it.

Ichiro felt his weight return, of course, but because Yao had kept them strapped in, he hadn’t been at any risk of injury. Yao looked after his midshipmen like a mother, and of all the duties the man had, it was the one he took most seriously.

“Perhaps our illustrious engineers have managed to partially repair the ship’s systems,” he said with a big grin as he stood up and turned toward them, the door now fully open. “Now let us seek out the rest of the crew-”

“Yao!”
Anna screamed in warning, pointing past him into the passageway. 

Ichiro, who had momentarily been preoccupied with unfastening his combat harness (even though Yao hadn’t yet given his permission to do so), snapped his head up in time to see a humanoid apparition smoothly step into the compartment. It looked much like one of the pictures of Samurai warriors his grandfather had been fond of showing him. And this warrior, for she could be nothing else in any civilization, was as frightening to Ichiro as fully armored Samurai must have been to simple peasants in long-ago Japan. Clad in shimmering black armor with a sword clutched in her right hand, she fixed the two young midshipmen with the predatory gaze of a big cat.

Suddenly realizing that Yao was standing right beside her, she spun with unbelievable speed, bringing her sword up to slash at his neck.

Ichiro watched in awe as Yao, standing still with a serene expression on his face, suddenly
moved
. Stepping fluidly toward the alien like fast-flowing and deadly water, he blocked her sword arm with his own left arm, breaking her attack. At the same time, he pushed out with his right hand against her upper left arm and chest, momentarily pinning her arm, neutralizing it, before sweeping his hand up to hammer the elbow of her sword arm, causing her to lose her grip on the weapon. His left hand smashed into the side of her face in a brutal open-handed attack that stunned her, followed by an open-palm strike by his right hand straight into her face that snapped her head back. Then Yao grabbed her sword arm with both hands and yanked her down along his right side, exposing the base of her skull to a savage strike from his left forearm. 

The alien crashed to the floor, unconscious or dead, her sword clattering to a stop at Yao’s feet. The fight had lasted little more than a second.

Anna and Ichiro gaped at Yao, completely stunned. “Ming...” Ichiro managed, “...how?”

The little man, his face still bearing a serene expression, ignored him for a moment as he knelt down to pick up the alien’s sword. Standing up, he assumed a fighting pose, then swung it through the air with professional interest. “Magnificent,” he conceded quietly, impressed by the weapon’s balance and, in truth, its beauty. The craftsmanship that went into making the weapon was astonishing.

“Ming?” Anna urged, now free of her combat harness. She and Ichiro moved next to the older man, who held the alien’s sword carefully down by his side. 

“It is what I have been teaching you, of course,” he chided gently as he searched the alien for any other useable weapons. She had a long knife and what looked like some sort of
shuriken
, commonly known as throwing stars. But these alien weapons were different, something that clearly required considerable skill to use. Ignoring them, he took the knife. “Not all the forms of
t’ai chi ch’uan
are slow and gentle,” he explained as he gracefully stood up. Yao had taken to instructing them in
t’ai chi
as a way to help them stay in good shape, and as something enjoyable to do together. But he had never let slip the fact that he was, and had been for quite some time, a
t’ai chi
master whose close-quarter combat skills were lethal.

Without hesitation, Yao handed the alien’s knife to Zalenski. She was senior to Ichiro, and also had some limited close-combat training.

While he felt a momentary flush of shame, having grown up in a very male-dominated society, Ichiro knew that Yao had made the right choice. It was one of the many ironies of his own youth that he had grown up on a world where ancient martial arts were nearly worshipped. But his father had never bothered to teach his “worthless offspring” any of what he knew, and Ichiro purposefully showed no interest. While he would have treasured having such skills now, he doubted he would have survived his father’s methods of instruction. His grandfather had tried to pass on what he could, but what Ichiro remembered from those days was little more than pleasant memories.

“Come,” Yao said, leading them out into the main passageway that wound its way through the ship. He turned left, heading toward the bridge, then stopped.

Three alien warriors, swords drawn, blocked their path.

Yao, his face serious now, turned to the young midshipmen. “Run, children,” he said quietly, before turning his attention back to the enemy.

* * *

The screaming suddenly stopped.

A few moments later, Harkness could see the alien moving toward them up the passageway from the damage control point, the strange blue glow that illuminated the ship’s interior glinting from the thing’s black armor. Harkness saw the sword and knew that the dark streaks running its length must have been from blood. Human blood.

Like most of the other members of the crew, Harkness had never had any formal close-combat training. The closest thing she’d ever had to that was brawling in seedy bars. When she was new to the Navy she had started her share of fights. As she’d risen in the enlisted ranks, she’d broken up her share. But her style of fighting was limited to in-your-face punches and smashing beer bottles over the head. And the last thing anyone had ever worried about in the list of potential situations
Aurora
might encounter was a hostile boarding. But here they were. Aliens. On her ship. Killing her crew.

“Fuckers,” Harkness hissed, her fury boiling away any trace of fear she might have had.

“Chief,” Seaman First Class Gene Kilmer asked, “what do we do?” A big man who’d done his share of brawling and more, Kilmer’s ham-sized fists were clenched tight, his eyes fixed on the approaching apparition.

“We take back our fucking ship,” she replied. Turning to the others, she said, “Grab anything you can use for a weapon. There’s seven of us and one of them. Some of us are going to get tagged,” she watched the alien raise its sword as it approached, “but we can take this one easy.”

The rest murmured agreement and quickly scattered through the module, grabbing whatever they could to throw at or strike the alien.

Harkness had a sudden inspiration. She reached under one of the consoles and grabbed a miniature fire extinguisher. It was small, about the size of a beer bottle, and didn’t have anything harmful in it. But it might give them just a second of surprise.

“Let it come in here,” she told the others, spreading them around the module away from the doorway. 

Without hesitation the alien stepped into the module, surveying her planned victims with what Harkness was sure could only be boredom. 

Keep thinking that, you bitch
, Harkness thought as she stepped toward the alien. Three meters. Two. The alien began to raise her sword. Then Harkness darted in just a bit closer and triggered the fire extinguisher in the creature’s face. 

The alien closed her eyes and whirled away, trying to avoid the white spray.

“Now!” Harkness yelled, and the six other crewmen, led by Kilmer, leaped at the alien, swinging or thrusting whatever they had chosen as a weapon. 

The alien blindly lashed out and caught Seaman Second Class Troy Fontino across the ribs with her sword, slicing muscle and bone as if it were paper. He collapsed to the deck, howling in agony.

But that was the only chance the alien got. Kilmer slammed into her, knocking her to the deck, and the others dog-piled on top of them. Kilmer was holding a heavy lead-lined isotope container, and started slamming it into the alien’s head, over and over, while the others kept the alien’s arms and legs pinned. He kept hammering at her, reducing the left side of her face to pulp, until he heard Harkness call out to him.

“Kilmer,” she said in an oddly subdued voice, “that’s enough.”

He smashed the container into his lifeless opponent one last time, then turned to look up at Harkness, his face spattered with alien blood. 

Three more aliens had suddenly appeared, and one of them held a wicked looking knife at Harkness’s throat.

* * *

At first the warriors found nothing but hapless creatures that were as meat animals before their swords and claws, crying piteously for what must be mercy. But it was a mercy they would not be shown. The warriors understood the concept, but no mercy would be shown to those who would not fight. 

Moving through the alien ship, they sought not to simply slaughter these beasts that largely mimicked their own form, but to bring them to battle, to see if they were worthy of the honor of the arena. Other species in millennia past had proven worthy opponents for Her Children, and it would be a great blessing to find another. 

Such encounters were momentous events in the history of the Empire, and the Empress had decided to send a warrior high priestess to act as Her eyes and ears, Her sword and shield. This priestess was the Empire’s greatest warrior.