In Her Name

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s the idea, ensign,” Eustus replied. “And maybe there is a planet in here somewhere.”

“That makes me feel a whole lot better,” the ensign answered nervously. He was a good pilot, but this was the first time in his short career that he had piloted a boat entirely on manual. For once, he was happy that the cutter had such a big forward viewport, for all the other times he had complained about it being too much of a distraction. “At least I don’t have to do anything more than play taxi driver,” he went on. “You jarheads are the ones who get to play touchy-feely if we find something. Providing, of course, that we don’t smash ourselves into whatever it is first.”

Eustus grunted agreement, thinking back over the turn of events that had landed him here. Three months after they had returned from Erlang, Eustus had been ordered back to fleet duty, never having seen Reza recover from his coma. Assigned to another of the Red Legion’s battalions, his company had been parceled out to Marchand’s “Roving Raiders” as they were sometimes known, and he had been sitting aboard the Furious with the rest of his troops for the last few months, waiting for action that never seemed to come.

Until now, he mused silently. And not only was this one of the most hare-brained and dangerous schemes he had ever been part of, but he had the dubious honor of having to take charge of it. Captain Dittmer, the company commander, had been seriously injured four days before when her pistol discharged while she was cleaning it. While Eustus had never had anything against Dittmer and had gotten along well with the woman, her level of tactical proficiency had never been demonstrated until then, and Eustus and the others who had seen combat had not exactly been impressed. While technically Eustus was outranked by the four platoon leaders (the company did not have an executive officer replacement yet), all of them were “ninety-day wonders” straight from Officer Candidate School, and none had any combat experience. In light of those facts, Commodore Marchand had made him a brevet captain and put him in charge of the company for this grand, suicidal tour.

Without thinking, he touched the locket that Enya had given him, that now hung around his neck. As wearing any kind of jewelry while in duty uniform was completely against regulations, he kept it hidden just below the neckline of his tunic, taped to his dog tags. At least she’s safe at home, he thought. She had returned to Erlang to help her people rebuild, and had promised to wait for him, to have a home ready for the two of them. If Reza’s word were true, as Eustus had always believed it would be, the Kreelans would never again bother Erlang.

He turned to look down the length of the cutter’s passenger compartment, now in its modified configuration as a troopship. Since the commodore was only willing (thankfully, Eustus thought) to risk one cutter on this mission, Eustus had been forced to leave half his company behind. Worse, the two platoons now crammed into the cutter had hard vacuum gear but none of the powerful space armor like Eustus and Reza had trained with at Quantico so many years ago. He bit the inside of his lip as his eyes swept across the anxious faces of his people. If they ran into anything bigger than a bunch of rock-throwing, blue-skinned female neanderthals, he thought, they were in big, big trouble.

“Tai,” said the copilot, a female petty officer, to the pilot, “check this out.”

Not able to keep himself from butting in, Eustus said, “What is it?”

The pilot shook his head. “Don’t know. Looks like a partial signal return from somewhere ahead.”

“The lifeboat?”

“No,” the copilot said decisively as she studied the signal. “The signal’s too scattered. If it’s hitting anything, it’s got to be pretty big.”

“Like how big?” Eustus asked, peering at the multicolored lines wiggling across her sensor display, unable to make sense of it.

“Like that big,” the pilot said quietly.

As if they were emerging from an ocean fog bank, the clinging white tendrils that had surrounded the cutter for the last few hours suddenly dissipated: before them lay a planet, basking in the radiance of the surrounding globe of mist.

The pilot’s eyebrows shot up at what the sensors were telling him. “This thing has an atmosphere that looks like it should be breathable,” he said wonderingly. “One point two standard gees, oceans, cloud formations, the whole nine yards. All that, and no sun to warm the place. Maybe the mist does it somehow.”

“Jesus,” Eustus whispered, wondering if somehow the Kreelans had engineered this. “How could this be?”

“Beats me,” the copilot said shortly, “but there’s our friend.” The lifeboat was clearly visible on the sensor display, which now was functioning normally within the confines of the hollowed out sphere within the mist. “Looks like they suffered some damage clearing their ship,” she went on as she worked the instruments. “Scorch marks and some dents along her hull. Stabilizers look like they’ve been smashed up pretty good.”

“Can we catch them?”

The pilot shook his head as he took in the information that was now flooding onto the viewscreen, which was really a massive head-up display showing flight and combat information provided by the ship’s computer. “They’ll make the surface first, but we’ll be right behind them. From the size of the boat, there can’t be more than a few blues aboard.”

That was the least of Eustus’s worries. “What about on the planet? Can you read anything?”

The copilot shook her head, frowning. “Nothing in orbit, no ships or satellites at all, anywhere in here. On the surface, I can make out what looks like non-natural structures. But there aren’t any indications of habitation: no hot spots, no movement. Nothing. Looks like a damned ghost planet.”

“Then why the hell were they so intent on getting here?” Eustus asked himself aloud. “What could they have hoped to gain?”

The pilot shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t always this way,” he said, speculating. “Maybe they thought there would be some help here.”

“And everybody just vanished?” the copilot snorted. “Come on, this is the Kreelans we’re talking about here.”

“True,” Eustus said, “but something really weird’s going on, been going on. Think about it: first, three heavy cruisers act like destroyer bait. Then they launch a lifeboat under fire – something I’ve never heard of, even in the tall tales you hear in the bars. And then they – whoever they are – head for what looks like a completely abandoned planet in the middle of whatever the hell this white stuff is.” He shook his head. “As much as I hate being in here, I think the commodore may be right. There’s something, or someone, in that boat that we need to know about.”

“Well,” the pilot said, “in about four and a half minutes you’re going to get a chance to do exactly that.” He glanced up at Eustus. “Better strap in, Top.”

“Roger,” Eustus said, quickly taking his seat – a flimsy affair compared to what the Marines’ regular dropships had – and buckling in. A minute later, he and his troops all had their helmets on, weapons checked, and were ready to go.

“Stand by,” the pilot announced over the intercom channel. “One minute.”

Eustus could feel the slight perturbations in the ship’s gravity controls as they balanced the internal artificial gravity against the rapidly increasing natural gravity of the planet. The scientists said that it was impossible to feel anything like that, because the equipment was so sensitive and sophisticated that it damped out the tiniest flutter. But Eustus could feel it, no matter what the scientists said.

“The enemy boat’s down,” the copilot reported. “I’ve got two targets moving away from it toward one of the structures, looks like an opening to a subterranean tunnel… Damn, lost them. Looks like you get to play hide and seek.”

“Gee, thanks,” Eustus replied sarcastically over their private channel. He did not need his troops to hear the very real fear in his voice. Following Kreelans into a tunnel on what looked like the only indigenous Kreelan world humans had ever discovered, knowing nothing about this place or whom they were chasing, was not Eustus’s idea of fun, even without the creepy mist they’d flown through.

“Ten seconds,” announced the pilot tensely as he guided the cutter as close as he dared to the yawning archway through which the escaping Kreelans had disappeared. “Ready… we’re down! Disembark!”

The cargo doors on each side of the cutter hissed open, and Marines poured from the ship to take up a security perimeter. Eustus leaped from the forward passenger door, a tight squeeze with his armor and weapons,