In Her Name: The Last War (5 page)

There was no warrior priestess in this system to bear the honor of leading them in this first encounter, but no matter. The senior warriors were well experienced and had the blessing of the Empress: they could sense Her will in their very blood, as She could sense what they felt. It was more a form of empathic bonding than telepathy, but its true essence was beyond intellectual understanding. 

As they neared the ship, the warriors curled into a fetal position, preparing to make contact with the alien hull. The energy shields altered their configuration, warping into a spherical shape to both absorb the force of the impact and force an entry point through the simple metal rushing up to meet them.

The first warrior reached the hull, and the energy shield seared through the primitive alien metal, instantly opening a portal to the interior. The warrior smoothly rolled through to land on her feet inside, quickly readjusting to the gravity that the crew of the warship had restored for benefit of the aliens. The energy shield remained in place behind the warrior, sealing the hole it had created in the hull plating and containing the ship’s atmosphere.

In only a few seconds more, all the other warriors had forced themselves aboard the hapless vessel.

* * *

The screaming Chief Harkness heard was from Ensign Mary Withgott. Her battle station was at a damage control point where the spherical bow section connected to the main keel and the passageway that led to the rest of the ship. The damage control point was on the sphere’s side of a blast proof door that was now locked shut. She could open it manually, but wouldn’t consider it unless she got direct orders from the captain. 

“Ensign!” one of the two ratings with her shouted as a shower of burning sparks exploded from the bulkhead above them. The two crewmen stared, dumbstruck, as someone, some alien
thing
, somersaulted through a huge hole that had been burned through the hull and into the damage control compartment.

A blue-skinned nightmare clad in gleaming black armor, the alien smoothly pirouetted toward the two crewmen, exposing fangs between dark red lips. Its eyes were like those of a cat, flecked with silver, below a ridge of bone or horn. The creature’s black hair was long and tightly braided, the coils wrapped around its upper shoulders. The armored breastplate had two smoothly contoured projections over what must be the alien equivalent of breasts. While Withgott had no idea what the alien’s true gender (if any) might be, the creature’s appearance was such that Withgott had the inescapable impression that it was female, a
she
. 

The alien stood there for a moment, meeting Withgott’s frightened gaze with her own inscrutable expression. Then the sword the alien held in her right hand hissed through the air, cleanly severing the head from the nearest crewman. His body spasmed as his head rolled from his neck, a gout of crimson spurting across the bulkhead behind him.

Withgott screamed, and kept on screaming as the alien turned to the second crewman with the ferocious grace of a hunting tigress and thrust the sword through the man’s chest. 

Then the fanged nightmare came for Withgott.

CHAPTER TWO

Amundsen knew that he would probably receive a court-martial for abandoning his post in the face of the enemy. But he had few doubts that any of the crew, particularly himself, would survive long enough to have to worry about such technicalities. 

While he was the survey section leader, his assigned jump and battle station wasn’t in the survey module itself, but in the main damage control point just forward of and two decks below the bridge. Amundsen was a “plank owner” of the
Aurora
, having been with the ship since she was launched, and in addition to being a first-rate astronomer, he was also an engineer who had intimate knowledge of the ship’s systems. His job was to help the XO manage the ship’s damage control parties during any sort of emergency, and to act as something of an insurance policy for the ship during its many hyperspace jumps.

The compartment they were in, which in everyday use served as the lower crew galley, had one peculiarity that was shared by only a few other compartments in the ship: it had a real viewport, a window to the universe outside the ship, and not just a video display.

After the inexplicable electrical hurricane had swept through the ship, killing all the electrical systems and leaving
Aurora’s
crew in darkness without gravity, Amundsen had pushed himself over to the viewport to look outside. He could see the huge alien warship off of
Aurora’s
bow. His eyes, which reflected more anger now than fear, took in the thing’s smoothly curving flank, which was adorned with great runes that stretched from the pointed prow toward the slim-waisted stern. He guessed that the ship must be at least four, if not five, kilometers long. It would have been a beautiful marvel of engineering if its purpose had not been so openly malevolent.

That’s when he saw them: roughly two dozen tiny forms that launched themselves from a bay that had opened like a biological sphincter. Sailing across the few hundred meters that now separated the two ships, he had no doubt as to their purpose.

“Commander Kumar!” he called out to the XO, who had been trying to locate an emergency locker in hopes of finding a light that worked. “Sir, you need to look at this!”

“What is it, Jens?” he replied quickly, making his way over to the viewport. 

“Look...” Amundsen pointed at the figures who drew rapidly closer. Over a dozen were going to land on the main habitation section, with the others spreading out to cover the rest of the ship. “Boarders.”

Kumar stared, openmouthed, at the approaching aliens. He didn’t want to believe it, but there could be no other explanation after what had just happened to the ship. “Bloody hell,” he whispered. He turned and leaped away across the compartment, back toward the still-dead damage control console, just as the walls, floor, and ceiling began to glow. 

“What the devil?” Amundsen gasped as he pushed himself back from the bulkhead, wondering at this latest horrific display of alien technology. Outside the viewport, the boarding party rapidly approached. 

Then the gravity came back on. Amundsen heard a loud thump and a brief cry of pain from Kumar as the man slammed down on the deck. Amundsen fell awkwardly, but managed to roll on his back to absorb most of the impact as he landed. He looked across the compartment and saw the XO sprawled next to one of the tables, his right leg twisted under him. A gleaming white sliver of bone protruded from his left calf muscle: a compound fracture. 

He quickly made his way to Kumar’s side. 

“Commander...” It was then that he saw the pool of blood spreading from beneath Kumar’s head. He felt for the man’s pulse and was rewarded with a faint but steady beat: he was still alive, but clearly badly injured and in need of immediate medical attention.

Kumar’s condition left Amundsen in a very difficult situation. In a battle, which this clearly had become, his duty was to stay at his post until or unless relieved: if engineering could get the electrical system back up, he needed to be here to help the damage control parties get to where they were most needed. Or do what he could to help repel boarders.

He was normally the only one posted here during a jump sequence, to act as a partial backup to the bridge and engineering in case something went wrong with a jump. Kumar had only been here because the captain had wanted a bit of extra human redundancy for this particular jump contingency. But none of the half dozen ratings who had their battle stations here had arrived after the captain had hurriedly sounded general quarters. Amundsen figured they had either become lost when the lights and gravity went off-line, had been trapped by the sealed compartment doors, or had been injured like Kumar. 

For now, at least, Amundsen was on his own.

He knew that he should first try to get help for Kumar, but he also desperately wanted to get in contact with the captain. Despite the mysterious blue glow that provided enough light to see by, and the convenience the return of artificial gravity afforded, there was no doubt that these were engineered somehow by the aliens. There was absolutely no question that they were now
Aurora’s
masters.

The thought suddenly made him uncharacteristically angry. No, more than that: he was enraged. Amundsen had never been an excitable man, nor had he ever been prone to anger, even in the most provocative situation. But these aliens had attacked
his
ship, the ship he had been with since her keel had been laid. The ship they were playing with like a toy and treating her crew, men and women who, while not really his friends, he had come to deeply respect, like rats. And now they had the balls to send over a boarding party...

Something in him suddenly melted and flowed away like white-hot steel. He hated to leave Kumar and knew that he was doing what The Book clearly said he shouldn’t. He knew he could be shot if a court-martial found him guilty of abandoning his post in the face of the enemy. 

But when he heard the shouts that suddenly rang out down the passageway that led to the rest of the ship, he knew that he had no more time to consider. The boarders had arrived.

Moving quickly, he left the galley compartment and headed down the passageway in the direction opposite from where he heard the shouting. He knew exactly where he needed to go.

The ship’s armory.

* * *

“Damage report!” McClaren’s voice cut through the sudden darkness and eerie sensation of weightlessness. He didn’t shout, nor did his voice contain any trace of fear. He had always been a problem solver. This was a problem, albeit an incredible one, and he focused himself on finding a way to solve it.

“Everything’s off-line, captain,” Raisa Marisova reported quickly from somewhere in the absolute darkness. With Kumar down in damage control, she was the acting first officer on the bridge. Her voice expressed her nervousness, but she was on top of it. “All systems, including the battery-powered backups, are dead.” She paused. “No communications, nothing. As far as I can guess, the hull hasn’t been ruptured. I can’t hear any air escaping.”

Despite himself, McClaren smiled.
Here we are
, he thought,
in a ship that’s a marvel of modern technology, and in the blink of an eye we’ve been reduced to relying on some of Mankind’s oldest sensors
. He knew that engineering would be working on trying to get the ship’s power back up, but he had to reestablish contact with the crew. And find out what the devil the aliens were up to.

“Captain!” the yeoman at the communications station yelped. Her console, followed by every surface of the bridge, began to radiate a deep blue glow. 

It gave McClaren the creeps, but at least it peeled back the darkness as he floated next to his command chair. “Take it easy,” he soothed. “Maybe the aliens are just giving us a hand-”

The return of gravity came as an unwelcome surprise. Some of the crew had been strapped into their positions, some hadn’t. There were several meaty thumps as those like McClaren, who hadn’t been strapped in, unceremoniously fell to the deck. Fortunately, no one had any injuries more serious than bruised dignity.

“Let’s get the door open,” he ordered gruffly as he stood up with as much grace as he could manage, “and find out what’s going on in the rest of the ship.” 

Marisova led two of the other bridge crew to the door and directed them in removing the manual access panel on the wall near the floor. It was a cumbersome, if straightforward process of first unlocking the door (all the major compartments of the ship automatically sealed themselves when the hyperspace jump interlock had been engaged), and then turning a crank to open it.

The door was open almost enough to squeeze through when McClaren heard angry shouts and screams of fear coming from both directions down the passageway that led fore and aft. He shoved himself sideways into the still-widening gap in the doorway, determined to find out what was happening. Looking down the passageway toward the bow, he couldn’t see anyone. They’d be in the compartments, not running around in the passageways, but that’s where most of the screaming was coming from. 

Suddenly he felt what could only be Marisova’s powerful grip around his arm, yanking him bodily from the doorway, back into the bridge. 

“What the devil-” was all he had time to say as the blade of a sword cleaved the air where he had just been.

“Close the door!” Marisova barked at the two stunned crewmen who were still cranking the door open.
“Shut it now!”
She had seen the alien rush up behind the captain as he struggled in the doorway, and hadn’t paused to think. She had just reacted, grabbing her skipper and using her considerable strength to pull him back just as the creature attacked.

McClaren faced the thing that stood on the other side of the doorway, baring its fangs at him. It pointed its sword at his chest, and he noticed the black rapier claws on its hands flexing just as the door slid closed.

* * *

Ichiro Sato fought to control his fear. It was an oily, slippery sensation that coiled and uncoiled in his gut. It wasn’t because of whatever had happened to the ship that had cast them into darkness and shut down the artificial gravity. It wasn’t the fear that the aliens might be hostile.

It was the dark. It was always the dark. His roommates at the academy had always thought him strange for keeping a tiny flashlight by his bedside. He claimed that it was simply in case of emergency, a prudent preparation for the unknown. He rarely used it anymore, but even at the age of nineteen the fear would sometimes come back. He would wake up in a cold sweat, panic welling in his chest until his hand found the comforting shape of the light, itself no bigger than his thumb. Just touching it would usually reassure him enough that he could control his raging fear, but sometimes he had to turn it on. Just to peel away the darkness.