In Her Name: The Last War (93 page)

“They were not part of the main body, mistress,” Ulan-Tyr said as she analyzed the information the ship’s computer provided, “but they appear to be of this world, not of the Messenger’s fleet.”

“All ahead flank!” Li’ara-Zhurah ordered. She had been closing on the Messenger’s ship gradually, in hopes he might understand that she meant him no harm. Had any of her warriors been able to speak his language, she would even have attempted to communicate with him. As it was, there was no point: each of them would only hear gibberish from the other. This was clearly a case where action would speak far louder than words; she hoped he would understand her intentions.

* * *

“Captain!
Captain!
”

Sato heard a familiar voice as if he were at the bottom of a deep well and they were shouting down at him from the opening far above. Unwillingly, he forced his eyes open. He was still on the bridge, slumped in his command chair, the combat straps holding him in place. He turned to see Bogdanova, now sitting at the navigation console. She looked terrible, just like he felt. “What is it, Bogdanova?” he asked, nearly choking on the taste of blood in his mouth. Only through a supreme effort of will was he able to keep himself from throwing up.

“The Kreelan ship following us must have gone to flank speed, sir,” she rasped. On the main display, the enemy ship was quickly closing the gap between them. 

“Are they in firing range?” Sato asked, confused.

“Sir, they’ve been in range of our weapons — if they were working — for at least ten minutes, maybe more. So I assume they could have hit us, too.” 

She suddenly doubled over, groaning, as a wave of nausea hit her. Sato empathized with her, but there was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of them could do. Every one of them was a dead man or woman walking. Even if they could get to a major planetside hospital, he doubted that most of his crew could be saved.

“I wonder why they suddenly accelerated,” Sato mused as Bogdanova pushed herself back upright, panting.

“Because of these...I think, captain,” she managed. On the main screen two bright objects, clearly ships, were heading straight for them, the glowing disk of Saint Petersburg behind them. “There are ships coming up from Saint Petersburg, sir,” Bogdanova rasped. “It’s hard to tell without the main sensors, but I think they may be some of the coast guard vessels. I can only find two, but it’s possible there may be more. Coming right for us.”

“Is this radio still rigged up?” Sato asked suddenly.

“Yes, sir,” she said, nodding.

Sato pushed the radio transmit button. “Saint Petersburg vessels approaching CNS
Yura
, be advised that we surrender. Repeat: we surrender! Our crew is suffering from acute radiation poisoning and needs medical attention—” He broke off as he saw flashes winking from the two ships visible on the screen, and then flashes from three more ships that were in the planet’s shadow, hidden in the darkness. “Damn them!” he hissed. “All hands, brace for impact,” he shouted. “Pass the word!” As the crewmen relayed his warning to the rest of the ship, he ordered, “Helm, bring us to two-three-six mark one-six-five. Can we get any more speed out of engineering?”

“We’re at redline now, sir,” Bogdanova reported as the ship began to turn sluggishly to port, her bow raising up over Saint Petersburg’s north pole. 

Sato gritted his teeth in frustration as he watched the scene on the display move all too slowly. 

“Engineering could only get one fusion core operating and stable,” she explained, “so we’re only at twenty percent of full power.”

Sato had known that, of course, but something didn’t add up.
The Kreelan ship
, he suddenly realized.
We were a sitting duck. Why hadn’t they closed the range and finished us off,
he wondered,
instead of creeping up behind them until the Saint Petersburg ships showed up?

“Estimated time to impact?” Sato asked. The Russian ships had continued to fire, pouring a steady stream of shells in their direction. Sato had no doubt that no matter how he maneuvered,
Yura
would be heading into a solid wall of steel, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Bogdanova and the other handful of bridge crewmen turned to him with pained expressions on their faces. 

“Without the sensors, or at least some way of gauging the range to the enemy ships, we have no way of knowing, sir,” Avril said quietly. “But probably soon.”

“Look!” Bogdanova cried as the main display suddenly filled with the bulk of the sleek Kreelan warship as it pulled alongside
Yura
, matching her course and speed with uncanny precision. “What are they doing?”

Sato clenched his hands on the arm rests of his combat chair, waiting for a cloud of warriors to spring forth from the enemy vessel, warriors they would be powerless to repel with most of the ship’s combat systems inoperative and its crew, including the Marines who had remained aboard, largely incapacitated.

He waited, but they didn’t come. Then, in a moment of utter clarity, he understood that the Kreelan ship had placed itself between
Yura
and the Saint Petersburg ships. “Good, God,” he breathed. “They’re shielding us!”

As he spoke, the Kreelan ship was surrounded with a halo of crimson and emerald fireworks as the weapons on her far side began to fire at the incoming Russian shells and the ships that had fired them.

* * *

Tesh-Dar gasped as she saw what Li’ara-Zhurah was doing on the tactical display. “No, my daughter,” she breathed as tiny icons representing the inbound human shells fell like rain upon Li’ara-Zhurah’s ship. Many were stopped by the ship’s point defense weapons, yet it was inevitable that some would get through. Li’ara-Zhurah was furiously returning fire at the attacking human vessels, which had immediately begun evasive maneuvers. While there were more of them, and they were clearly heavily armed, they were small and could not take much damage. Torpedoes arced out from Li’ara-Zhurah’s ship, vaporizing first one, then another of the attackers. Then the remaining three closed in, firing non-stop as they came. “Maneuver,” she whispered, willing Li’ara-Zhurah to get out of the way of the incoming bombardment. “You must move clear!” 

Li’ara-Zhurah’s ship did not move, but stayed abeam of the Messenger’s ship, shielding it from the rain of fire from the other human vessels. Tesh-Dar did not have to reach out with her second sight to see the battle: she could feel it all in the Bloodsong of Li’ara-Zhurah and the others on her ship. She did not have to know exactly what they thought, for she could sense their fear or trepidation. There was none. Only fierce pride and joy that they would bring great glory to the Empress.

In that moment, Tesh-Dar realized that Li’ara-Zhurah would not hesitate to give her life and that of her unborn child for the Messenger. It was an epiphany bound in pride for the young warrior whom she had chosen as her successor, and fear that Fate would somehow snatch her away.

For one of the very few times in her life, Tesh-Dar, high priestess of the Desh-Ka and the Empire’s most-feared warrior, was captured by indecision. She considered sending other ships to assist Li’ara-Zhurah, but the senior shipmistresses were fully engaged with the large human force here. Moreover, it would not do to coddle Li’ara-Zhurah: if she were to become what Tesh-Dar hoped, she must be able to face and survive the challenges placed before her; she must find her own Way. She would also resent Tesh-Dar’s interference, and rightly so.

At last, doing her best to force aside her mounting anxiety for Li’ara-Zhurah and the child she carried, the child that Tesh-Dar had allowed to be carried into battle instead of being safely sequestered on a nursery world, Tesh-Dar decided to simply watch the situation closely, content in the knowledge that she could yet intervene, if necessary. 

Having decided that internal struggle for the moment, she decided that the next phase of the battle for this planet was to begin. Perhaps it would draw the attention from the three ships clawing at Li’ara-Zhurah as she sought to defend the Messenger. Closing her eyes, she sought out the thread in the Bloodsong of one of the other warrior priestesses who waited nearby with a special fleet. The streams of their spirits touched and briefly entwined, and in that moment Tesh-Dar’s emotions conveyed a simple message:
It is time
.

* * *

“My Marines are marching on the main spaceport now,” Grishin said through the vidcom. “We hope to find a ship that can transport us back to the fleet.”

“We could send our cutters down to ferry you back,” Hanson told him.

Grishin shook his head. “We will not last long,” he explained. “We no longer have the element of surprise, we are low on ammunition, and our cutter is badly damaged. Korolev’s troops will finish us long before we could get everyone ferried back. We will either find a ground to orbit freighter with which we can link up with you, or a ship with jump drive. If the latter, we will need additional crewmen to man it, assuming the cutter pilots can get it off the ground.”

“You’ll have them,” Hanson promised. “Just get your butts into space, colonel.”

“New contacts!” cried the flag tactical officer on
Constellation’s
flag bridge. “Eight...ten...no, shit...” He paused, a look of disbelief on his face as he stared into his console display. Turning to Commodore Hanson, he said, “
One hundred and seventeen
new contacts just jumped in-system, ma’am. So far.”

“Are you sure...?” Hanson’s voice died away as she studied the tactical display. The count spiraled upward until it finally stopped: two hundred and forty-three ships. She looked at the data displays next to each of them, almost unreadable because there were so many ships. Half of them appeared to be warships in the heavy cruiser class. The others were huge. “My God,” she exclaimed. “Two kilometers long, massing half a million tons? Those numbers can’t be right!”

“I think they are, commodore,” the flag captain interjected. “Look.” The ship’s main telescope was now focused on the mass of ships that had jumped in, dangerously close to Saint Petersburg’s gravity well. Their markings, large cyan runes over a brilliant green on the sleek hulls, left no doubt as to whose ships they were.

“The small one there,” the flag captain highlighted a vessel that was perhaps an eighth the size of the larger ones around it, “is about the size of a heavy cruiser. If I had to guess, I’d say these are troop transports. Massive ones.”

“Colonel, did you catch all that?” she said urgently to Grishin. 

“Yes, commodore,” he told her. “It appears that a Kreelan invasion force has just joined our quaint little party. Do not worry about us. Fight your ships, and we will contact you when we are on our way.” He paused. “I truly hope to not have to fight them on the ground again. Not now.”

“I understand, colonel,” Hanson told him. “Good luck.”

“Godspeed, commodore,” Grishin said just before his image faded to black on her console.

Hanson sat back, stunned at the size of the enemy fleet. She watched, speechless, as the armada moved in, taking up orbit around Saint Petersburg.

“Orders, ma’am?” the flag captain asked quietly.

Hanson heard his voice as if in a dream. She had kept the task force at arm’s length from both the original Kreelan fleet and the Russians, firing at the former when she could while trying to avoid being fired upon by the latter. It was like sparring in a boxing match, but with three boxers in the ring, all fighting one another.
Saint Petersburg is lost
, she thought.
There’s no way we could help them, even if they let us. Even if every warship from Earth and the Alliance were here, they still wouldn’t be enough
.

“You can’t run now,” a vaguely familiar voice said quietly. “You have a duty to the men and women on that planet who need you to get them out of this, to bring them home.”

She turned to find Torvald, her resident spymaster, standing beside her combat chair, staring at her. His words snapped her out of her dark reverie. “I don’t get paid to
run
, mister,” she told him angrily, “but I’ll also be damned if I’m going to lose my entire goddamn task force! In case you can’t add, we’re slightly outnumbered here.”

The flag bridge became utterly silent, with every member of her staff, even the flag captain, studiously looking anywhere but toward her and Torvald. 

“I’ll do everything I can to get my people — including your agent — off the planet,” Hanson went on in a quieter voice, forcing the words through gritted teeth as she jabbed a finger into Torvald’s chest, “but I don’t need the likes of you to remind me of my duty. Now, if there’s nothing else, get the hell off my bridge before I have the Marines throw you in the brig.”

Torvald looked at her impassively, then quietly turned and left the flag bridge.

Orders
, she thought, pushing Torvald from her mind.
What orders can I give in a situation like this?
 

Before she could say anything, the flag tactical officer said, “The Saint Petersburg fleet is trying to disengage with the first Kreelan force, commodore. It looks like they’re trying to come about to intercept the invasion fleet.”

Hanson nodded. That gave her something to work with. “Communications,” she ordered, “try to raise Admiral Voroshilov from the Saint Petersburg fleet again. Let’s see if he might like our help
now
.”

* * *

“The sensors cannot be correct. This must be some sort of electronic
maskirovka
, a deception by the Confederation fleet,” Korolev’s image said decisively. 

“Comrade chairman,” Admiral Voroshilov said, fighting to restrain his anger, “the sensor readings you see are correct. We have verified the size of these massive vessels with every type of sensor, including optical measurement.
There is no doubt
. And from their design and markings, they are clearly nothing like the Confederation ships. The Kreelan threat is real, and they are here. I believe these ships to be troop transports. You must have Marshal Antonov activate the military reserves immediately, and bring the remaining orbital and planetary defense sites to full readiness. We should also activate Riga’s defense forces—”