In Her Name: The Last War Read online

  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.

  She had not come by ship, but had simply materialized on the command deck of the lead warship, transported from the far side of the Empire in what was purely an act of will by the Empress. Such were the least of Her powers.

  Standing quietly aboard the great vessel, the warrior priestess cast her mind outward to the alien ship, noting with quiet satisfaction that the aliens were beginning to pose a challenge to the warriors. They were starting to fight back.

  Perhaps they would be worthy opponents, after all.

  * * *

  McClaren still stood staring at the closed door, trying to believe what he had just seen. Alien boarders with swords, he thought. What the devil? “So much for first contact,” he muttered hoarsely.

  “Captain,” Marisova said quietly, “what do we do?”

  For the first time in his career, McClaren didn’t have an answer to that. Marisova’s question really got to the heart of what being a captain was all about: showing or telling people what needed to be done. Letting them use their brains to figure out things as much as possible, but when all hell broke loose, it all came down to that one question, and the captain was always expected to have an answer. He had to have the answer, because the captain was one step down from God.

  For all that, McClaren was first and foremost an honest man. He was lousy at poker and couldn’t tell even the smallest white lie without giving himself away. Besides, the people he worked for, his crew, deserved only his best.

  “I don’t know, Raisa,” he told her, loud enough for the others on the bridge to hear. He swept his gaze over them in the strange blue light the aliens had somehow provided. “But here’s what I do know,” he told them firmly. “Yes, we’re in a bloody pickle,” that was as close as he ever got to cursing, “but we’re not going to panic. We’ve lost control of the ship, and our first priority is to try and regain control, at least long enough to make sure the computer is destroyed and our navigation records are kept out of enemy hands.” He didn’t bother calling them aliens any longer. “To do that, we’ve got to somehow reestablish contact with the rest of the crew to make sure someone else does the job, or somehow get past those...things out there,” he gestured toward the closed door, “so we can make sure it’s done ourselves.” He paused. “Without power, that’s the only option I can think of, unless someone else has some bright ideas?”

  The others were silent. The bridge only had one exit. As for weapons, unlike some of the other compartments that had some items handy that could be pressed into service as weapons, there was really nothing on the bridge they could use but their own bodies.

  “Okay, then,” he said quietly.
“Let’s get the door open. There won’t be any finesse to what we do after that, because we don’t have a lot of options. Just-”

  He saw the pilot’s eyes go wide, looking past him, and McClaren whirled around just as the door, hardened alloy that was ten centimeters thick, suddenly glowed white and then just disintegrated into a pile of coarse black powder on the deck.

  Beyond stood the alien that had tried to attack him earlier, and one of its companions, wearing nearly identical armor. The first one darted forward, raising its sword to strike.

  McClaren didn’t even pause to think. He had grown up in a tough neighborhood in a gray-hearted city on the world of Bainbridge, and had managed to channel his violence into boxing. He probably could have made it as a professional on the Bainbridge circuit, but that wasn’t where he wanted to take his life. He had always been captivated by the stars, by all the worlds that humanity had found and colonized, and by the new ones that appeared in the news reports. He wanted to be an explorer. As it turned out, he managed to get accepted to the Terran Naval Academy because of his “sports” abilities. He wasn’t the most promising of the plebes that year, but he graduated second in his class four years later, with the additional title of world college middleweight champion. Not bad for a kid with skinned knuckles who’d grown up fighting his way out of the slums.

  Those instincts and the many hours he had devoted since then to keeping in top shape served him well now. As the alien’s sword reached the top of its deadly arc, he danced forward - fast - and faked a left hook that drew the alien’s attention, just as he’d hoped. It dropped its sword arm, the right arm, to try and block his strike, and lashed out with the claws of its left hand just as McClaren twisted his body, throwing all his power into his trademark right cross. His fist slammed into the alien’s jaw, rocking its head back. He could hear and feel the crunch as the creature’s jawbone broke under his knuckles, but he didn’t stop there. The alien’s armor limited the options he had for punches, but when it lost its balance, reeling backward, its right arm, still clutching the sword, windmilled upward, exposing the armpit. McClaren had no idea if the alien’s physiology was anything like a human’s, but he wanted to take the sword out of the equation and it was a target of opportunity. His left arm swept up in a powerful jab that landed squarely under the alien’s arm where there was no metal armor to protect the bundle of nerves that served the arm, only what looked like smooth leather.

  With a grunt of agony, the alien dropped its sword and slammed against the bulkhead next to the door. McClaren was going to move in and finish it off, but suddenly Marisova was there. She grabbed the warrior’s right arm, paralyzed from McClaren’s left hook, and snatched it up in a fireman’s carry. McClaren watched, wide-eyed, as his navigation officer tossed the alien over one shoulder, then smoothly dropped to a kneeling position on the same side. Marisova had one arm still wrapped around the alien’s neck, guiding its spine down to the navigator’s bent knee. McClaren clearly heard a wet crack as the alien slammed down, its head bent back at an extreme angle over Marisova’s leg.

  He was no surgeon, but to him that sounded like a broken neck. Score one for the home team, he thought grimly, turning to the other alien behind him.

  The creature simply stood there, its outstretched sword keeping the other members of the bridge crew at bay for the few seconds he and Marisova had taken to finish off its partner. While he couldn’t read the alien’s body language or expressions, if he had to guess, he’d say it looked satisfied.

  “Your turn,” he growled as he moved toward it, fists raised in their ready position, with Marisova moving off to one side to flank the creature.

  But he never got a chance for a second round. The alien casually brought its free hand to the collar around its neck, from which hung a dozen or so glittering pendants, and touched it in a peculiar fashion.

  McClaren’s vision exploded in a white flash before darkness took him.

  * * *

  Ichiro sprinted down the passageway, Anna right behind him. His gut boiled with fear and self-loathing, feeling like a coward for abandoning Yao Ming. But his friend’s quiet order to run had left no room for doubt or argument.

  And so the two of them ran. At first, Ichiro had no idea where they were going, except to get away from the three aliens who had confronted Yao Ming. The ring of sword against sword still echoed in his head, and tears threatened to burn his eyes at the thought of Ming being killed. But Ichiro’s subconscious was guiding him with a purpose, even if it was one he didn’t understand or recognize.

  He and Anna, breathing hard with the exertion of running and fear of what must be somewhere behind them, suddenly found themselves standing in front of the doors to his quarters. These doors weren’t designed to be airtight, nor were they normally locked. Taking the alien knife from Anna’s hand, he shoved it into the center slot of the door and pried it open enough to get a grip with his fingers. Then he simply shoved it open enough for them to enter.

  “In here,” he breathed, grabbing her arm and leading her inside.

  “We can’t hide here, Ichiro,” she gasped, trying to catch her breath as he handed the knife back to her. He could run like a greyhound, and she’d had trouble keeping up. “The door...”

  “We didn’t come here to hide,” he told her as he quickly rummaged around in the closet at the end of his bed. Aurora was a naval vessel, but her accommodations were far more luxurious than any warship designed strictly for combat: even the midshipmen had their own tiny cabins, and plenty of storage space. It was a small tradeoff for deployments that could last a year or more.

  “Ichiro...” Anna said worriedly, keeping her eyes on the door.

  “Ah...” he said finally. She watched as he pulled something out of the closet that was over a meter in length, and that at first glance looked like a shiny black tube several centimeters across, slightly curved...

  “Is that a sword?” she asked, incredulous. Personal weapons like that were not normally allowed aboard ship.

  “Yes,” he told her as he held the katana by its handle, then reverently drew the gleaming blade from the polished black scabbard. He had been tempted to show it to Yao Ming once, but had chastised himself for wanting to show off. He had no idea how impressed his friend would have been with the quality of the weapon. “It belonged to my grandfather.” He glanced at her as if reading her mind. “The captain gave me a waiver for it. It is the only thing I have to remember my family by.”

  He had no time to tell her about the old man, and about how much he’d loved him. His grandfather had been the only thing to keep Ichiro’s father in check, at least until he was paralyzed from the neck down in a freak transportation accident when Ichiro was only five years old. After that, bedridden in a closet-sized room at the back of his family’s apartment, the father of Ichiro’s mother endured his own special form of hell. But it was a hell he and Ichiro shared, and the old man was the boy’s childhood hero. His grandfather had been a great swordsman, his mother had told him, and the old man had told his grandson what he could of his former life, and showed him pictures from books and the information network, when his father was not around, of what it meant to be a warrior. He couldn’t train the boy in the way of the sword, but he could teach him what it meant to have a sense of honor.

  “He never had a chance to teach me to use it,” Ichiro explained softly. “But he always told me that it was the spirit of the warrior that mattered most.” He looked at her, fierce determination lighting up his eyes even as tears streaked down his face. “I accept that I will die here. But I will not dishonor him. Nor will I dishonor my shipmates.”

  She leaned forward and gently kissed him on the lips. Anna had entertained fantasies about being more than friends with Ichiro, but she realized now they would never have the chance. “Let’s go,” she said quietly.

  They left his quarters and moved quickly down the main passageway that would eventually lead them toward the bridge, Anna still clutching the alien knife,
Ichiro holding his grandfather’s katana at his side.

  Turning a corner that would lead them to a set of stairs that would take them up to the level the bridge was on, they nearly collided with two aliens coming in the opposite direction.

  Ichiro, simply reacting on instinct, brought his sword up over his head for an overhand slashing attack, while Anna backed away slightly: her knife had no business in this particular fight.

  The alien easily parried his amateurish attack with her own sword, then casually moved in close to slam her opposite elbow into his jaw.

  Dazed, Ichiro was sent flying to the deck. The only thing he was conscious of was that he had managed not to drop his grandfather’s sword. Anna moved to a position between him and the two aliens, holding her knife in an underhand grip.

  “Come on,” she hissed at them. “Come on!”

  As one of the aliens made to step forward, an ear-splitting roar filled the passageway, and her head disappeared in a spray of bone and gore.

  Quick as a cat, the other alien went for something on her shoulder that looked like some sort of throwing weapon, with several wicked blades attached to a central hub, but she never reached it.

  There was another roar, and the second alien pitched forward, a hole the size of a dinner plate in her chest.

  Her ears ringing, Anna looked around to see what, who, had done this, when Lieutenant Amundsen stepped around the corner from the direction the aliens had come, smoke streaming from the muzzle of the M-22 Close-In Assault Rifle he was holding. Pausing just long enough to give each of the aliens a spiteful kick, Amundsen quickly made his way to Ichiro and helped him up.

  “Lieutenant...” Anna said, so grateful to see him that she nearly burst into tears.

  “Are we ever glad to see you!” Ichiro finished for her, his jaw aching fiercely.

  “You’re the only two I’ve found so far who are alive,” he told them grimly. “The rest...” He shook his head slowly.

  After leaving Kumar behind, an act that threatened to crush him with guilt, particularly once he saw what had happened to most of the rest of the crew, he had gone to the ship’s small armory. Amundsen couldn’t fight worth a damn with his hands, but he knew how to handle a rifle. He wasn’t an Olympic marksman by any stretch, but at the ranges afforded by the ship’s passageways and compartments, he didn’t have to be.