Stars of Blood and Glory (30 page)

“
Now go,” said Roman.

Jalil was boarding the shuttle now, with
Mira following close behind. She stopped at the hatch and gave one
last, longing glance at Rina, and in that moment the chains of
despair that held her captive all seemed to burst, and she ran
forward with all the exuberance of a small child into her sister’s
arms.

“
Mira!” she cried, tears
streaking her face. “Mira, Jalil—don’t leave me!”

“
Never,” said Mira, holding her
close. “We will always be there for you.”

As the long lost sisters hugged each other,
the darkness clouding Rina’s soul gave way to a brilliant light—not
the harsh light of an explosion, but the warm, peaceful light of a
life-giving sun.

Chapter 18

The locks in the coffin door clicked loudly
as they opened, vibrating through the gelled padding that held
Hikaru in place. Outside, she heard the sound of quick footsteps
and hastily spoken words. Her heart still raced in her chest, and
she hesitated for a few uncertain moments before pressing her palm
to the access pad in front of her.

The door to the compartment unlatched and
swung open, allowing her to step out. She found herself surrounded
by soldiers, all running about in a strangely ordered chaos toward
the doors. Several of them shot a glance at her as they ran past,
but none of them stopped to help her.

“
Hey!” she cried after them.
“What’s going on?”

“
Didn’t you hear the orders?”
said a thirty-something woman in an olive-green uniform, probably
some kind of sergeant. “We’re evacuating to the shuttles. If you
have anything stowed in your quarters, Princess, better get it
now.”

Hikaru frowned. “Evacuating? What—”

“
Those are the orders. Now let’s
move!”

What’s going on?
Hikaru wondered as
she hurried out into the hallway. Were they in danger? Where were
they going, and why were they leaving the ship this far into deep
space? She’d always thought that combat would be flashy and
exciting, not dark and full of hurried confusion like
this.

“
The captain,” she said, breaking
away from the main group of soldiers. “Where is she?”

The sergeant clenched her teeth and shrugged
before hurrying on her way.

“
Try the bridge!”

The bridge,
Hikaru thought to herself,
setting off at a run down the dimly lit corridor.

* * * * *

Roman groaned as he gradually returned to
his physical consciousness. The wounds in his stomach and shoulder
throbbed with pain, but he opened his eyes and slowly regained his
bearings. He was kneeling on the floor in Rina’s private quarters,
with Danica and Abaqa standing over him. Someone had dressed his
wounds, so that he wasn’t bleeding as badly as he had when he’d
gone under. The girl Rina was unconscious in his arms, a little
stiff but breathing normally. A smile crept across his face—even if
she didn’t wake for a while, he knew she’d be all right.

“
Krikoryan,” said Danica,
kneeling next to him. “Roman, how are you feeling?”

“
Exhausted,” he said, rising to
his feet. His wounds stung something awful, but that didn’t prevent
his prosthetics from functioning properly.

“
You’re going to need more than a
field dressing for those wounds,” she said, rising with him.
“Fortunately, nothing vital was injured. How is the
girl?”

“
She will recover,” he said,
laying Rina gently on the cot. “Her implant is neutralized. She
will not be Hameji slave any longer.”

“
That’s good.”

“
I’m so sorry for this,” Abaqa
said softly, shaking his head. “To think that Tagatai—I never
knew.”

Danica nodded and took a deep
breath. “Unfortunately, we have no time for apologies. The
Tajji Flame
is in no condition
to fight, and we have nowhere to run except the surface of the
planet. While you were recovering Al-Najmi, I cave the general
evacuation order.”

“
Evacuate?”

“
Yes. The shuttles aren’t
equipped with jump drives, so you’ll have to wait for a Federation
starship to come back and pick you up. The chances of that probably
aren’t too good, but if you and the men can get out of this alive,
then that’s all that matters.”

“
And the
Tajji Flame?
”

She paused, her expression grim. “In order
to draw off the strike team, one of us will have to stay behind and
draw them off.”

Roman frowned. “Stay behind?”

Realization struck him like a hard blow to
the stomach. A lump rose in his throat, and his natural leg went
weak, forcing him to lean on his prosthetic.

“
Don’t do this, Captain.
Please—”

“
It’s a good plan, but it won’t
work,” said Abaqa, stepping between them. “In a situation like
this, the strike team would comb the area for survivors, even if
the target went down without discharging any escape pods. If you
want to throw them off, you’re going to need something
else.”

“
Such as?” Danica
asked.

He glanced from her to Roman and back again,
with the nervous excitement so often displayed by the youth when
they recognize a good idea. “The escape pods are equipped with
shortwave transceivers, aren’t they?”

“
Yes,” said Roman.
“Why?”

“
If I stay behind with the ship,
I can escape in one of the pods and contact the strike team using
the shortwave. Once they’ve picked me up, I’ll tell them that the
ship went down with all hands, and that there were no
survivors.”

“
Interesting,” said Danica,
folding her arms. “But how do we know we can trust you?”

Abaqa turned to her and drew himself up like
a man. “I know that we’re enemies,” he said softly, “but you are
friends of my mother, and—and men of true honor. I give you my
word, I will not betray you.”

Danica looked at him long and hard, as if
she could read his entire life story in one determined glance. The
young prince shrunk a little under her unrelenting gaze, but held
his own. After several tense moments, she nodded.

“
Very well,” she said. “Return to
the bridge. I’ll join you shortly.”

“
Yes, Captain,” he said, nodding.
He turned awkwardly to Roman, as if unsure whether to salute, but
spun around quickly and left the room.

“
Captain,” said Roman, his right
eye blurring with tears, “Captain, please—let it be me.”

“
I can’t do that,” said Danica,
failing to meet his eyes. “As captain, it’s my duty to go down with
the ship. See to the men—make sure they’re safe.”

“
But Captain—”

“
That’s an order,” she said,
looking up at him. A sigh escaped her lips, and the impassive mask
of command fell away, revealing a face that was surprisingly old
and careworn. And yet, the vitality and emotion in her eyes was
unchanged, even after all these years. She stepped forward and put
a hand on his arm, and it was all he could do to keep from breaking
down right there.

“
You always say that cyborgs
never die,” she said softly, “but when I look at you, I see a man
who hasn’t really lived. I want you to live, Roman—I want you to
stop fading and truly live before you die. Understand?”

He nodded, trembling uncontrollably as tears
began to spill from his eye. “Captain,” he stammered, then wrapped
his arms around her like a little boy.

“
It’s been an honor serving with
you, Roman.”

He tried to respond, but was too choked up
to say anything.

As they let go of each other, he became
dimly aware of hurried footsteps outside the edge of his vision.
“Captain!” came the voice of a young girl—the princess, his digital
mind registered. “Captain, what’s—” she gasped and drew silent,
standing off in the doorway.

“
See to the princess,” said
Danica. “Use the money from that job to buy a new ship. And
Sergeant—take care of my men.”

“
I will,” said Roman, his lip
still quivering. He turned and picked up Rina from the cot, his
movements stiff and automatic. More than ever, he felt as if he
were trapped in a mechanical body, watching like a spectator while
someone else controlled his actions.

“…
and be sure to see
to your wounds,” Danica was saying. “That’s an order,
Sergeant.”

“
Yes, Captain.”

He paused in the doorway, turning to look at
her one last time before leaving. She stood with her hands clasped
comfortably behind her back, her uniform crisp and her expression
full of grace.

“
Live, Roman,” she said simply.
“That’s an order.”

“
I will.”

She saluted him, her thumb tucked tightly
under her palm in the traditional Tajji fashion. Still holding Rina
with his prosthetic, he lifted his right arm and returned the
salute. His breath came in short, erratic gasps, but before he
could recover, she turned and left for the bridge.

Live, Roman,
her words echoed in
his mind. But inwardly, he felt as if he had died.

* * * * *

The bridge of the
Tajji Flame
seemed eerily empty.
The chairs were all conspicuously vacant, some turned around almost
backward in the men’s haste to leave. Out the forward window, the
looming mass of the lifeless planet seemed almost like an ominous
black hole in an otherwise brilliant starfield. Indicators still
blinked on the various displays, abandoned in mid-function by men
whose time was quickly running out.

Abaqa settled down in the old cyborg’s
chair, bringing up a map of the area on the scanners. The radar
traced alien landforms on the surface of the world below: cracks
and crevices split from the rock as the planet had slowly cooled in
the star-filled void. No bases or outposts, however—and nothing on
the horizon, though a series of intersecting lines ahead in their
trajectory showed where the Hameji strike team would soon intercept
them.

The door hissed open, and Danica stepped
inside. “What’s our status?” she asked as she took the pilot’s
chair.

“
No sign of our attackers,” said
Abaqa. “We’re coming up on them, though—about five minutes to
intercept.”

A distant groan announced the departure of
the shuttles. On the scanners, they appeared as a pair of twin
dots, dropping speed and altitude as they descended to make
planetfall.

“
Shuttles away,” said Danica.
“How long until they’re off the scanners?”

“
A few minutes,” said Abaqa.
“They don’t have much time.”

“
Then we’ll have to give them
more.” She engaged the sublight engines, filling the room with a
distant rushing noise as they came to life. The floors and
bulkheads vibrated ever so slightly, and the scanners showed them
accelerating to a higher orbit.

“
I’m picking up something,” said
Abaqa, narrowing his eyes at the scanner. “Two signals, coming over
the horizon at negative thirty degrees.”

“
I see it,” said Danica. “Are the
shuttles out of detection range?”

He took a moment to check. “For the moment,
yes. If they come within another hundred kilometers, though, there
could be a problem.”

“
We’ll have to force them to
alter their course. Bring the railguns to bear and send a series of
bursts along their current trajectory. I’ll activate the gravitics
and dive at about a five degree angle to draw them to a lower
orbital.”

“
Yes, Captain.” As he activated
the gun controls, he couldn’t help but hesitate for a brief,
doubt-filled moment. He was about to fire on his own people, after
all—under the orders of a planetborn woman.

“
Is there a problem,
Prince?”

“
No problem,” he said,
remembering his promise. “Firing now—stand by.”

The whole ship vibrated as the cannons came
to life, the muzzle flash lighting up the exterior hull through the
forward window. The bursts flared for a second as they traced an
arcing path across the horizon, then passed away into silence.

“
They’re altering their course,”
said Abaqa. “Dropping into the gravity well—and answering
fire.”

“
Diving at seven degrees. Set up
a plasma screen and prepare for impact.”

Abaqa nodded and activated the short-range
plasma cannons, setting them to automatic fire. The ship began to
groan from the strain of the dive. He mentally counted down the
seconds as the projectile fire from the Hameji gunboats came
closer. Outside, brilliant bursts of plasma flared across the
starfield, and the ship lurched as the debris raked across their
hull.

“
Damage?” Danica asked, as alarms
began to sound from the various consoles.

“
Mostly superficial,” said Abaqa.
“We’ve lost some armor and maybe a couple of laser-stars, but the
plasma screen neutralized most of it.”

“
Good. Stand by for evasive
maneuvers.”

As she banked the ship, the horizon turned
until it was almost vertical. Even though the gravity on the bridge
remained the same, Abaqa couldn’t help but swoon a little at the
sight.

“
We’ve got three other signals
coming in,” he said. “Two at twenty-five degrees, another nearly
dead on. The first two are firing again—now the others are, too. We
have incoming projectile fire from three directions.”