In Her Name: The Last War (88 page)

“
Fuck!
” Faraday cursed as a sudden energy spike surged through the cutter. Every system flickered for a moment, and he nearly lost control of the ship in the roaring slipstream around them before the attitude control computers came back on-line. The cutter rolled sickeningly on its back and began to yaw, but he managed to wrestle the craft back on course before it went out of control. Looking at the tactical display, he saw that all of the radars had suddenly gone down, and the tracks of the interceptors had also disappeared, as if they had simply vanished. “Thank you, God,” he whispered as he pushed the throttle forward as far as he dared, desperate to get into the ground clutter where the ship would be far more difficult to track.

He had no idea where he was going or even why. All that mattered, he had been told — personally — by Commodore Hanson, was to guide on a very peculiar beacon signal and get the Marines on the ground. After that, Hanson had told him cryptically, he would receive further instructions from someone on the ground.

Sabourin had her eyes glued to Mills. At the same instant the ship’s systems had flickered, Mills had grunted as if someone had bludgeoned him, then he passed out. He now hung slack in his combat harness, his head lolling from side to side as the atmosphere bounced and jolted the little ship. She normally would have been able to tell from her tactical readout what his vital signs were, for every Marine carried equipment that monitored their physical status, but the energy surge had apparently fried the electronics built into her gear. Everything associated with her weapons and basic communications seemed to be fine, but the technology-based “combat multipliers,” the most critical of which was the inter-Marine data-link network, was gone.

Switching over to a private channel that she and Mills used, she said, “Mills, can you hear me?” More urgently, she said, “Roland? Roland, answer me!”

“I...I hear you,” he rasped. As he lifted his head up to look at her, she gasped as she saw blood streaming from his nose, with bloody tears in his eyes. It looked as if every capillary in both eyes had ruptured. “Christ, I can’t see a fucking thing,” was all he managed before he vomited over the front of his uniform.

“Two minutes!” Faraday barked from the flight deck as he suddenly pulled the ship out of its screaming dive, bringing it level just above the massive trees of the endless Saint Petersburg forests. 

The copilot, who also doubled as the cutter’s weapons controller, stared intently at the ship’s defense displays. The ground radars were coming back up, but the cutter was so low now that they couldn’t lock on. There was no sign that the interceptors were still on their way, but that could be good news or bad: they had either been destroyed by the energy spike, or were now playing hide and seek at treetop level, just as the cutter was, or running with their active sensors off, so the cutter’s sensors couldn’t detect them.

The ride was still incredibly rough, and Sabourin ignored the pilot’s curses as she finally unstrapped herself and carefully made her way across the aisle to Mills. 

“Well,” he said, attempting his trademark devil-may-care attitude, “at least my frigging headache is gone.” He made an attempt at a cheerful smile, his teeth covered in blood from having bitten his tongue again.

“You are a mess,” she told him, ripping open a field dressing and using it to wipe the blood from his eyes. She followed it up with some water from her canteen, half of which she spilled in his lap when the cutter jolted upward, then sharply down again.

“Well, that’ll help clear the puke away, then,” he muttered, looking at the mess running down the front of his uniform before hissing at the pain as she poured more water into his eyes. “That’s enough, luv!” he said, gently batting her hands away. “I’m okay.”

She scowled at him as only a Frenchwoman can. “
Imbecile
,” she chided, finally putting away her canteen.

Putting a hand over his tiny helmet microphone, he leaned close to her ear. “She’s here,” he whispered. “Don’t ask me how I know, but that huge bitch of a warrior is here, somewhere on the planet or in the system.”

Sabourin’s eyes flew wide. “An invasion?
Here?
”

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Let’s just get this job done and get the hell back to the fleet as quick as we can.” Whatever had been plaguing him in his dreams and that had brought on the awful headache was gone now, as if a balloon had suddenly burst, finally relieving the horrible pressure in his skull. Despite the residual pain, he felt much better than he had in days, if not weeks. And as he had told Sabourin, he knew the Kreelans were here somewhere. He was sure of it.

“One minute!” the pilot called out.

“Jaysus!” Mills cursed, shoving aside his thoughts about the Kreelans. There were more pressing matters afoot, and Sabourin should have been getting the platoon ready instead of fussing with him. He would have to talk to her about that later. In bed. Assuming they survived this harebrained operation. 

Unstrapping his harness and getting unsteadily to his feet, using one arm to support himself on the forward bulkhead against the cutter’s still-violent flight, he boomed, “First Squad,
up!
”

The men and women of First Squad got to their feet in a flurry of clinking buckles and the tell-tale sound of weapons being checked one final time. They shuffled forward toward the two front personnel doors.

“Second Squad,
up!
” Second Squad did the same, taking up position behind the Marines of First Squad.

“Third Squad,
up!
” The remaining squad stood and faced to the rear and the larger cargo door in the cutter’s starboard side. Their exit would be a little easier, as the door would drop down to act as a ramp. The first two squads would have to jump a bit over a meter to the ground.

“Thirty seconds!” the pilot called.

“Bloody hell,” Mills cursed as he leaned forward into the flight deck to look at the tactical display. But what caught his eye was the view through the forward windscreen. “We’re going right fucking downtown, you fool!”

“Hey, Top,” Faraday said tightly as he maneuvered the cutter between buildings, the ship’s belly a mere two stories above the ground and its sides nearly scraping the buildings on either side. “My orders were to go to the goddamned little bug on this screen, quick like a bunny,” he nodded toward the main tactical display and the glowing green icon representing the beacon they were after. “Nobody told me the fucking thing would be in the middle of the capitol city!”

Mills got a glimpse of a street flashing by below. It was crammed with people, all staring up at the passing ship with comic expressions of disbelief on their faces. They were flying that low. “So where is the damned beacon?” he asked as Faraday quickly slowed the ship as they approached their destination. With the Marine data-link out of action, there was no way for the pilot to echo the beacon’s location to Mills for him to follow.

“Looks like it’s on maybe the sixth floor of this building,” the copilot said quickly, pointing to what looked like a run-down apartment complex. “And I think it’s moving.”

“Disembark!” Faraday shouted as he brought the cutter into a hover above the street. The forward doors slid open and the rear door quickly lowered. The Marines leaped to the ground, forming a defensive perimeter around the ship. 

Mills followed Sabourin and the First Squad out the forward doors. “First Squad, on me!” he bellowed above the roar of the cutter’s engines as he charged toward the apartment building, with the other two squads and the cutter guarding their backs.

* * *

Sikorsky felt like a coward, hiding in the bedroom while Valentina fought for their lives and her own. But he was Ludmilla’s last defense, and he was determined, more than at any other time in his life, that she would come to no further harm. Keeping his submachine pistol aimed at the doorway, he felt no fear, only rage, and his hands kept the weapon’s stubby barrel steady.

He cringed at the sounds coming from the front room: the growls, grunts, and screams of a pitched battle at close quarters. There had been gunfire in the first few seconds, but then only a few sporadic shots after that. He remembered the sounds of combat during the war years ago, and this was little different. Ludmilla whimpered as the wall to the front room shook violently with the impact of a body hurled against it, the wet smacking sound punctuated with the dry snapping of bone. She huddled close to him, shivering in fear.

He heard a noise that he did not recognize, a drone that quickly became a roar just outside the building. The little device Valentina had given him now glowed a solid green. 

“Help is here,
dorogaya
,” he shouted to Ludmilla over the roar, just as the ferocity of the fighting in the front room suddenly peaked in a flurry of what could only be savage blows and crashes as the combatants flung themselves about the front room in a final killing orgy.

After one last crash, there was only the roar of the engines outside. Sikorsky tightened his grip on the submachine pistol, his finger easing in more pressure on the trigger, preparing to fire.

“Dmitri!” a woman’s voice — Valentina’s voice — called wearily from the front room. “It’s clear! Come on, we have to go!”

“
Slava Bogu
,” Sikorsky whispered.
Thank God
. “We are coming!” He gathered up Ludmilla in his arms and helped her into the front room. He was totally unprepared for the sight that greeted him.

The apartment looked as if it had been struck by a bomb. Every piece of furniture was overturned, with the dining chairs reduced to splinters. The bookshelves had been smashed and their contents, most of it Party propaganda and novels by sanctioned authors, spread like confetti across the floor. The kitchen was a disaster, with shattered dishes and glassware everywhere. There were holes punched through the thin drywall by fists and feet, with blood streaked and spattered haphazardly across the walls and floor. He gaped at one of the secret police, whose head had been rammed completely through one of the walls, a spear-tipped leg from one of the demolished dining chairs stabbed through his back. The bodies of half a dozen more secret police were scattered throughout the wreck of their small home, their bodies bloody and broken.

In the middle of it all stood Valentina. She had a deep gash across her right cheek and a bloody welt across her left arm where a bullet had grazed her, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. Sikorsky shook his head in wonderment: she wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Let’s go,” she told them, helping him guide Ludmilla through the mess and around the bodies. She paused only long enough to snatch up one of the submachine pistols, slinging it quickly across her shoulder. “Downstairs.”

As they moved down the hall toward the elevator, they heard the sound of heavy footsteps hammering up the stairwell. 

“Get behind me,” she said grimly as she pointed her weapon toward the stairwell door.

The footfalls suddenly ceased, and the door creaked open slightly. “Confederation Marines!” someone called in a voice with an unmistakable British accent. “I was told to ask if you might be Scarlet,” the voice said.

“That’s me,” she said in Standard, smiling tiredly at the camouflaged face that carefully peered through the door. “We could use a bit of help here. I’ve got two civilians with me. Friendlies.”

With that, a massive man in Marine combat armor, holding an equally massive pistol that he pointed safely toward the ceiling, burst through the door. He held it open as more Marines charged through. Two of them slung their weapons and began to help Ludmilla and Sikorsky, with the rest forming a protective cordon around them and Scarlet.

Up and down the hallway, a few doors cracked open and wide, disbelieving eyes peered out before the doors slammed shut.

“First Sergeant Roland Mills, at your service, miss,” the big Marine said, quickly shaking her hand. “Let’s get on the road, shall we?”

The young woman offered no objections as the Marines bundled her and the two bewildered civilians down the stairway. Behind them, Mills and Sabourin paused, peering through the door to the apartment. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Mills said, impressed with the devastation. 

“Do not piss her off,” Sabourin advised with a wry grin as she turned and double-timed after her squad.

“No worries about that,” Mills muttered as he quickly followed after her.

They had just pushed through the front doors of the apartment building when a volley of small arms fire cracked down the length of the street toward the cutter, clearly audible through the roar of the ship’s hover engines. 

“Return fire!” Mills shouted. “But watch for the civilians!” The last thing he wanted on his hands was a bloodbath of innocent people who got caught in the crossfire.

The Marines immediately unleashed a barrage of accurate rifle fire that quickly silenced their attackers, who turned out to be a pair of militiamen who normally directed traffic, but who were armed with pistols and unwisely decided to try and defend their motherland with them.

The Marines got Sikorsky and his wife aboard, and covered Scarlet as she darted up the rear ramp. 

“Time to go, Marines,” Mills said on the platoon common channel. Instantly, the three squads reversed their deployment order to board the cutter, with the only difference being that they all piled in through the rear ramp. Faraday already had the cutter gliding forward before the hatch hummed closed.

“Well,” Mills said to no one in particular, “that was unexpectedly easy.”

“Glad you think so, Top,” Faraday told him grimly, “because we’ve got new orders, straight from the commodore.”

“Okay, let’s have it,” Mills said, wanting to kick himself for his comment about the mission having been easy.
Jinxed yourself, you wanker
.

“The fleet’s lost contact with Colonel Grishin’s force,” Faraday told him. “They want us to do a recon to see if we can regain contact. I’ve got the coordinates, and that’s where we’re heading now for our first stop.”