In Her Name

ships like a siren’s lair on the seas of old. Much sensor probing and more discussion had not given them any more understanding of it than that it appeared to exist; it was real. He dearly would like to chalk up the remaining cruiser to the squadron’s score, but there was something unsettling about the cloud toward which they were heading, something unnatural that sent a shiver up his spine. He silently wished that Marchand would call an end to the chase. He did not want to take Furious in there.

In the main viewer there was a sudden flare where the Kreelan ship – otherwise invisible to direct observation – raced in front of them.

“Captain!” shouted the chief gunnery officer. “Looks like they had a core breach! She’s losing way!”

“Thank the Lord of All,” Hezerah breathed. “How long till she comes in range?”

“If their projected deceleration curve holds up, thirteen minutes, sir,” the navigator replied.

“Will she have reached the nebula?” Marchand asked quickly, her eyes fixed on the little red icon in the holo display that was now ever so slowly losing ground to her own pursuing hounds.

“On the current velocity curve, she’ll come within about three-hundred thousand kilometers of it by the time we’re in range.”

“Close,” Hezerah muttered.

“Order the destroyers to flank her at their best speed,” Marchand ordered her operations officer. The destroyers could make slightly better speed than the larger cruiser, and Marchand felt it worth the risk of pushing their drives past their already strained limits. “They are not to get within range, just keep her penned in. I don’t want her to get away from us now. Captain,” she said to Hezerah, “you are to commence firing as soon as we are in range.”

“Aye, aye, commodore,” he said. Anything to keep from having to go into that so-called nebula, he thought.

The minutes crept by as the human squadron, the destroyers now pulling ahead and slightly to the side, gained on the fleeing Kreelan ship. The human sensors recorded the debris the enemy cruiser left behind, silent mementos of the explosion that destroyed enough of her drive capacity to leave her far too slow to escape, to make it into the looming mist. It reminded the humans of how easily they could become marooned in this strange area of space.

Marchand watched with barely contained impatience as the main battery range rings on the holo display slowly converged on the enemy ship. At last they overtook the fleeing prey, flashing a set of gunnery data that was echoed throughout the ship’s weapons stations.

“In range, captain,” reported the gunnery officer.

“Commence firing!”

The lights on the bridge dimmed to combat red as the energy buffers of the main guns siphoned off all available power that was not used by either the ship’s drives or her shields. Seconds later, the energy was discharged into space in the form of a dozen crimson blasts from the cruiser’s main forward batteries, stabbing out toward the ever-slowing enemy ship.

“Three direct hits,” the gunnery spotter reported. She need not have; the extra long range and precise resolution of her special instruments were not required in this case. The Kreelan ship had long since come into view on the main screen at a medium magnification, and the hits were plainly visible.

“Fire!”

Again the main batteries fired, and it was obvious that the gunnery section had found the Kreelan cruiser’s range. Every crimson lance hit home, flaying the enemy ship’s vulnerable stern into flaming wreckage. The stricken ship began to yaw off course, a secondary explosion setting her tumbling about her long axis. A sudden flurry of shooting erupted from turrets along her battered hull as the human ships came into their line of fire, but the firing was erratic, poorly aimed. She posed no threat.

“Fire!”

The third salvo blasted the cruiser amidships, breaking her back. The stern section, two of the six drives still burning bright with power, broke free of the shattered midsection to drift uncontrollably until it exploded in a fierce fireball. The sleek bow section, still resplendent with the runes with which all Kreelan ships were decorated, tumbled end over end, trailing incandescent streamers that were the ship’s burning entrails.

Captain Hezerah was about to order the coup de grace when the chief gunnery officer spoke up. “New contact! Looks like a small cutter or lifeboat separating from the bow section.”

“What the devil?” Marchand asked, watching on the viewer as the tiny ship separated from the twisted wreckage of the cruiser. It wasted no time, heading straight toward the nebula at flank speed.

“Commodore?” Hezerah asked, waiting for her instructions. The guns were trained on the cruiser, waiting to finish her off. The escaping cutter was another matter. Unless they took it under fire right away, it had every chance of making it into the nebula.

Marchand had no time to consider. Something strange was afoot, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it. “Captain, you may finish off the cruiser,” she told Hezerah shortly. Turning to her operations officer, she ordered, “Have Zulu intercept the lifeboat, or whatever it is. She is not, repeat not, to open fire on it. I want it – and whoever might be on board – in one piece if at all possible.”

“Aye, ma’am.” The man turned away and quickly relayed her orders. Like a greyhound on the scent of a rabbit, the destroyer Zulu hauled her bows away from the dying cruiser to pursue the much smaller prey.

But as the Furious quickly finished off the remains of the Kreelan ship, it became clear that Zulu would not be able to get close enough to the escaping lifeboat to fix her with a tractor beam.

“Dammit,” Marchand hissed Nothing could ever be easy, she thought acidly, or even just difficult but straightforward. More and more, she wanted that ship, and whoever or whatever was on it.

It suddenly had become an imperative for her, an obsession. It was a hope for explaining the strange twists of fate that had brought them farther than any humans had ever been into this sector.

To the flag operations officer she said, “Tell Zulu to maintain contact and continue to close, if possible.”

“They’re to proceed into the nebula, ma’am?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. Their sensors had not been able to penetrate the milky whiteness, the likes of which no one had ever seen before. They would be running blind.

“Negative,” Marchand sighed. She was well aware of the dangers, and was not about to risk one of her ships in there. She had another idea. “She is to proceed to the mist’s edge only. And have the other destroyers patrol around the nebula. I don’t want us to be surprised from the far side. Captain Hezerah.”

“Ma’am?”

“Take your ship to the mist’s edge,” she told him. “And have the Marine detachment commander report to me immediately in my ready room. I have some work for them to do.”

As he carried out her orders, Hezerah silently thanked the gods that he would not have to go in there.

He also said a silent prayer for the Marines who would.

* * *

“This stinks,” Eustus muttered as he stared at the unbroken whiteness that was all either he or the pilots of the ship’s cutter could see. He’d never seen or heard of anything like it in space. It wasn’t a nebula, which was a lot denser than normal space, but nothing remotely like this. It was like flying through a cloud in atmosphere, with noticeable resistance against the vessel’s screens and hull.

“Tell me about it, Top,” the pilot in command, an ensign on his first tour, replied. “Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.” None of the instruments that were normally keyed to the universe beyond the small hull were showing anything, the mist effectively isolating them from any points of reference except what the ship carried on board. The pilot knew only his relative velocity, distance, and bearing from Furious since the time they had launched. And if there were a gravity well in here – a planet or dwarf star, for instance – even the ship’s inertial readings would be rendered useless and they could find themselves completely lost. After they had entered the mist in pursuit of the Kreelan boat, they had quickly lost all contact with the Furious and the destroyers. He had no idea at all what was in the space around them except where they had just passed, which by definition was empty, relatively speaking. “There could be a frigging planet hiding in here and we wouldn’t know until we hit it.”