In Her Name: The Last War (32 page)

Sabourin nodded grimly. She knew what he was going to ask before he asked it. “I will hold them off, sir,” she said quietly.

He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed tightly. She could barely feel it through the thick fabric of the suit. “I know you will,” he told her proudly. “It should not be long now.”

Raising her right arm, she saluted him, the gesture awkward in her suit, and he returned it. Then, looking past the crowd of worried faces, she asked him, “Sir, how many doors are there beyond this one that you were able to close and lock?”

“Two,” he told her. “I doubt they will hold them long.”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “
Amiral
, if you would, please open this door. I believe I have a plan that may buy us a bit more time.”

* * *

Now at the tail of a group of a dozen warriors pursuing the remaining human survivors of the crew, Li’ara-Zhurah felt a quickening in her breast. The battle to take the bridge, while brief, had been exquisite. The lone human with a pistol had killed two of the other warriors when they had all attacked. Li’ara-Zhurah fought him in hand to hand combat to honor his skill. Such fighting clearly had not been his strength, but he still fought with spirit, and to her that mattered a great deal more. The outcome of that particular contest had never been in question. But when she finally rammed her outstretched fingers into the human’s chest, her talons piercing his heart, it was with regret, for he had allowed Li’ara-Zhurah and the others to bring great glory to the Empress in the fight to overpower him.

And now, the battle to take the ship was almost over. She was exhausted and in great pain from her wounds, but her Bloodsong filled her spirit and merged with the infinite chorus of her sisters. No greater ecstasy had she ever known.

The warriors at the head of the group, senior to Li’ara-Zhurah in their order of the challenges fought for the honor to be in this first great battle, opened yet another door the humans had locked behind them. It was a crude if effective tactic to buy some time, but she did not know what they expected to accomplish: herded now to the ship’s main starboard airlock, there was nowhere else for them to run.

She heard the warriors at the head of the group sing out with battle cries: the humans were before them! She let herself be swept along as the group surged forward, swords held high.

* * *

Sabourin stood alone in the passageway as the Kreelans forced open the door in front of her. Behind her, the last blast door in the main gangway stood open, with the terrified faces of the crew’s survivors looking past her as they stood with their backs pressed up against the rear wall that held the airlock. She had confirmed through her suit radio that
Jean Bart
, one of
Victorieuse’s
sister ships, was moving close aboard to extend a flexible dock. But they still needed just a few more precious minutes. 

She held the shotgun at her side. She would use it at the last moment if she had to, but she was hoping that the Kreelans would not decide to send their flying weapons at her if she posed no direct threat. If they did and they killed her off first thing, her plan might not work so well. She grinned at her own morbid humor.

She had wondered if her presence, particularly while still wearing the suit (which was nearly out of air), would give the enemy pause. But it had the opposite effect: with a howl, they charged forward
en masse
, driven to a frenzy by the sight of the helpless crewmen behind her.

And so they never noticed the circle of putty-like material as they ran forward, at least until Sabourin pushed the single button on the electronic device that had been in the pouch with the putty strip. With a flash that seemed as bright as the sun, the boarding charge exploded into white-hot flame, burning the flesh of half the Kreelans still charging toward her. 

As the aliens’ battle cries turned to screams of agony, she flung herself out of the way, against the bulkhead with the open blast door leading to where her fellow crewmen waited, willing bait for her trap. 

Kneeling down, Sabourin brought up her shotgun and began to fire into the mass of burning alien warriors.

* * *

Calling to the warriors ahead of her, trying to find out what had happened, Li’ara-Zhurah could get no answer. All she could see were silhouettes of warriors dancing amid white-hot flame, and her ears were deafened by shrieks of agony. The air was thick with the stench of burning meat, metal, and hair, and she instinctively backed up, away from the carnage ahead of her. Whatever had happened, her sense of honor did not dictate that she immolate herself.

Then she heard the booms of one of the human weapons, and caught site of the lone suited human, kneeling to the side of the open door. She was firing into her sisters, which to a warrior such as Li’ara-Zhurah was a mixed blessing in such a horrid situation: being killed by a weapon such as the human wielded would be no small blessing to those whose bodies were now burning like living torches. 

But even had that thought not stayed her hand for a moment, she had no
shrekkas
left. The human was beyond her reach unless she wished to brave the fire.

Then it struck her what the fire truly was: one of the boarding charges. With widening eyes, she looked at the human in the suit again, still firing into the churning mass of her sisters, noting the crudely rigged tether that held the human to the bulkhead. And around the open hatchway that led to the airlock, where the other humans cowered, Li’ara-Zhurah saw the trace of one of their own portable airlocks. Transparent and hardly visible at this distance.

It was a trap.

“Oh, no,” she breathed, backing up toward the next blast door. “Pull back, my sisters!” she screamed over the din. “
Pull back!
” Hissing in fear and rage, she grabbed two of the closest warriors and pulled them back with her to the bulkhead behind her. There was no telling how thick the hull was here, and so how long the charge would take to breach-

With a thunderous roar, a two meter diameter section of the deck dropped away, blasted into space by air pressure. With screams of surprise now blending with those of agony, the rest of the warriors who were still alive were sucked out the hole in the deck to their doom.

The two warriors she had just pulled back had failed to grab hold of anything, and both lost their footing and tumbled across the deck to disappear into the infinite void beyond. Li’ara-Zhurah had seized the bulkhead wall with one hand, gripping it so fiercely that her diamond-hard talons dug into the metal. With a supreme force of will, fighting against the pain of her eardrums bursting and the air being sucked out of her lungs, she pulled herself to the door controls and slammed her hand down on the various buttons until, to her great relief, the door began to close. 

As it did, Li’ara-Zhurah caught a last glimpse of the human in the suit, who had acted as bait for the trap. The human gave her what appeared to be a salute: she held one arm straight out in front of her, the hand clenched in a fist, before she brought her other hand over onto the extended arm just above the elbow. Then she swung up her clenched fist as the door slammed shut.

* * *

“
Va te faire foutre,
” Sabourin gasped at the lone surviving warrior before she disappeared behind the closing blast door.
Go fuck yourself
. 

All the other warriors were gone, swept down through the hole she had burned through the deck and the hull. Sabourin had hated to hurt the
Victorieuse
that way, but there was nothing for it.

Staggering to her feet, she undid the tether, still surprised that it had held when the hull gave way. Then she stumbled to the outer membrane, opening it only with great difficulty. The admiral and crew, while frightened when the air had exploded from the hull and snapped the inner membrane taut, had survived. Her plan had worked. 

Her fingers were numb and her breathing was coming in quick gasps now: her suit was out of air. But if she didn’t make it through the outer membrane, no one inside would be able to come get her. Glancing through to the airlock, she saw that
Amiral
Lefevre stood there, waiting for her. The other members of the crew had been ushered into the link to the
Jean Bart
, so they were safe, at least for the moment.

After what seemed like days, she finally sealed the outer membrane behind her. But she had strength for nothing more. Her hands reflexively going to her neck, she slumped to the floor, her vision darkening as her brain began to run out of oxygen.

She felt more than heard the
pop
of air as the inner membrane was opened, filling the outer bubble where she lay with air. Then someone undogged her helmet and pulled it off. Taking in huge lungfuls of air, she found Lefevre looking down at her with a warm smile on his battered face.

“Come along, Sabourin,” he said kindly, shooing away the crewmen from the
Jean Bart
who had come to help. He lifted her to her feet, draping one of her arms over his shoulders as he gripped her tightly by the waist to help her to the other ship. “I think you have done enough for one day.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Admiral Tiernan stared grimly at the tactical data that the crew of
Alita
had brought from Keran. While the information was priceless, it was also dangerously out of date: even in the two hours that it had taken
Alita
to reach the rendezvous point, the battle could have been lost or won. Tiernan was a gambling man, a superb poker player, and he wouldn’t have put much money on the Alliance fleet from the replay of the first few minutes of the battle. Even though their ships were good, and he knew the Alliance had many first-rate naval officers, it was clear from the information before him that they were also outnumbered two-to-one, and the French commander had placed himself at a tremendous disadvantage by splitting his forces. Had he kept his fleet intact in high orbit rather than distributing his squadrons around the planet, he would have been able to concentrate enough combat power to fight at even odds with the larger Kreelan task force, and would have been able to completely overwhelm the smaller one. Unless the French admiral had pulled a rabbit out of a hat, he was going to be feeding his squadrons piecemeal to the enemy. And that was assuming that any of them stood a chance in hell against the Kreelans’ technology.

“How much longer?” he asked his flag captain as he continued to replay the opening sequence of the battle that
Alita
had recorded, trying to absorb every nuance that he could. This was the only intelligence information they had to work with, their only insights into Kreelan tactics. The decisions he made based on this information would likely decide the outcome of the battle. 

“Three minutes and forty-seven seconds, admiral,” Captain Hans Ostermann replied quietly, his own eyes fixed on the countdown to emergence that was displayed in every compartment of the ship, and in every ship in the fleet. 

Tiernan nodded as he went back to his study of the display, carefully concealing his trepidation. He had allowed himself only five minutes to evaluate the data
Alita
had transmitted the instant she arrived at the rendezvous point. It was immediately clear to him that they had no time to lose if they were to stand any chance of helping the French. It already might very well be too late. 

His own plan called for splitting his forces, but not in quite the same way as the Alliance had. He had four assault carriers carrying the two heavy ground divisions. They were to jump in as close as they could to the planet, run like hell for low orbit to disembark their troops, and then jump back out to the safety of the rendezvous point. Tiernan had only detailed four destroyers to escort them on their inbound leg; he knew that he was taking a huge risk with that light of an escort, but he simply didn’t have enough ships to go around. 

He planned to commit the rest of his force - eight heavy cruisers, fourteen light cruisers, and sixteen destroyers - in two mutually supporting tactical squadrons. That decision had been easy. The more difficult one was how to use his fleet to best advantage. He only had two viable options: support the Alliance squadrons in high orbit that had begun to engage the larger Kreelan force, or link up with the single Alliance squadron that was facing a substantially smaller Kreelan force closer to the planet. Both options assumed that there would be enough Alliance ships left intact to matter, because his own fleet would not stand a chance against even half the Kreelan ships shown by
Alita’s
data. His fear was that the Alliance squadrons that had been maneuvering to attack the larger Kreelan force might have already been defeated, since they would have been seriously outnumbered. But the sole Alliance squadron that had been engaged by the smaller Kreelan force was at least on fairly even terms, the unknowns of Kreelan technology notwithstanding.

Gambling is about numbers, luck, and guts, and Tiernan knew that you might have two of the three in any given hand. He knew the numbers from
Alita’s
data, at least as of four hours ago, and knew that he and his crews had plenty of guts. The only question was how good their luck might be. He couldn’t afford to take the long odds offered by the big fight going on in high orbit, even though a tactical victory there would likely kick the Kreelans out of the system. That left him with one option: his fleet would attack the smaller Kreelan force and pray that this Alliance squadron, and hopefully some of the others, had survived this long. Then they could regroup to take on the larger Kreelan force.

“Emergency jump protocols confirmed,” the flag captain reported. If the fleet jumped in and the situation was untenable, Tiernan wasn’t going to waste his fleet. They would immediately jump out again to the rendezvous point. And it wouldn’t take two minutes for the hyperdrive engines to spool up as on the
Aurora
. That little safety interlock problem had been fixed.