In Her Name

any chances he might have of saving the Empire – and the Confederation – would be lost forever.

Borge frowned. “Silence is entered as a plea of guilty.” He turned to Jodi. “Commander Jodi Mackenzie, you are charged with conspiring with Captain Gard to murder Doctor Rabat and President Nathan; further, you are charged with the despicable murder of Tanya Buchet. How do you plead?”

“Go fuck yourself,” she spat.

Borge snorted in disgust, then turned to the new Chief Justice, another of his latest appointees, Anton Simoniak. “Your Honor, if you please.”

Simoniak stepped up to the podium. “Due to the barbaric nature of these crimes and the subsequent bloody escape of the accused, the court was compelled to conduct their trial in absentia,” the Chief Justice stated flatly, as if bored by the supposition that they could possibly be anything but guilty. “The call for justice was unanimous.” He looked down upon the condemned. “You have both been found guilty, as charged, on all counts.” Turning to Borge, he said, “The recommended sentence is death, Mr. President, to be carried out immediately.”

Enya opened her mouth to speak, but found Braddock’s hand over her lips.

“Don’t,” he whispered urgently, “or you’ll find yourself condemned along with them.” He looked around urgently, afraid that someone might have noticed their exchange. No one was paying them any attention. Good. “There’s nothing you can do for them now.”

She angrily pulled his hand away, ashamed that he was afraid to speak out against this madness. And she was even more ashamed that she herself remained silent. Braddock was right, she thought as she watched the tragedy unfold before her. There was nothing to be done for them.

Borge nodded gravely as the justice stepped back to his position among the rest of the luminaries on the dais. “I concur with the verdict,” he said, “and with the sentence. However, with the power vested in me as president, I hereby commute the sentence until Operation Millennium has been completed and our fleets return home.” His eyes bored into Reza. “I want these traitors to witness the destruction of the evil that has washed our galaxy in human blood for the last hundred years, to see the power of God’s vengeance before they see the gates of Hell!”

Like a surging tide, the assembly roared its venomous approval.

* * *

From where she stood on a catwalk, high above the fateful ceremony, Nicole did not hear the thousands of voices shouting from below. The only sounds perceptible to her mind were the strange whisperings, the chill in her body, that had been her frequent companions since the day Reza had pressed a bloody hand against hers, showing her things that no other human – save him – had ever seen.

She had watched him from her catwalk perch like a peregrine in a cage, wanting to help, but unable. She felt his heart, his soul, and the pain and rage that spilled from him now threatened to bring tears to her eyes, harsh action from her clenched hands.

Below her, the verdict having been pronounced and the crowd’s lust for vengeance temporarily sated, Reza and the others were led off to the ship’s brig, enduring the humiliation of being spat upon and cursed like molesters of children.

Just before they passed through the blast door that led to the ship’s internal transport system, the huge female warrior looked back, and up. For just a moment, an incalculable instant, her eyes locked with Nicole’s.

Help him, Nicole read in the woman’s eyes as plainly as if she had spoken the words aloud. Help my son.

And then she was gone.

Clutching the railing so hard that her knuckles were bled white, Nicole waited for the trembling to stop before she made her way unsteadily back to her cabin. She knew what must be done, almost as if by instinct. Guided by powers that she did not understand, she began her preparations as soon as her cabin door closed behind her.

The fact that what she was about to do would be considered high treason never even occurred to her.

Fifty

As she stood at the podium of the conference room, Admiral Laskowski took smug satisfaction in the looks of grim submission on the faces of L’Houillier and Zhukovski. There was no longer any question of who was really in charge now. The man who sat at the head of the conference table had decided that issue when he had personally approved of Laskowski’s plan, and reinforced it with the fourth star he had given her, promoting her on the spot to full admiral for her role in discovering the Kreelan homeworld. Technically she was still junior to L’Houillier, but that was a mere technicality. He and Zhukovski had only pushed forward their retirement dates by arguing against her strategy. And now, here they were, mere spectators to the operation that she had devised, that she was now in charge of in all but name, reviewing it for her president’s pleasure.

It was all her dreams come true.

“Mr. President,” she began, “the attack plan is fairly simple, necessarily so because of the huge number of vessels involved.”

This brought a barely audible grunt from L’Houillier. They had lost another ten ships to collision at the last navigation checkpoint. Zhukovski’s great eyebrows knotted as a frown chiseled itself from his glowering face.

Laskowski cast L’Houillier a disparaging look, but said nothing. You are finished, old man, she told herself. “As I was about to say, sir, the three battle groups – Lysander, Ulysses, and Heraklion – will jump into the system simultaneously from three different vectors.

“Lysander, the main battle group of which Warspite is the flagship, will engage the Kreelan main body that now orbits the homeworld. Our job will be to pin down the Kreelan fleet, and if possible destroy it en masse. Once that has been accomplished, we will proceed to neutralize the homeworld itself through orbital bombardment and, if and when appropriate, Marine landings.”

Borge nodded magnanimously. His ignorance of military strategy and tactics allowed him to be properly impressed.

“Ulysses,” she went on, “smaller than Lysander, will execute a similar operation against the moon that has been identified in orbit around the primary target.

“We don’t have detailed information on the defenses for either target, but we don’t believe at this time that planetary defense will be a major factor in the engagement: our primary threat is the enemy fleet.”

This brought a raised eyebrow from Zhukovski to L’Houillier. The latter only shook his head in tiny, hopefully unnoticed movements. Merde, Zhukovski could imagine him saying. To himself, he thought: We know nothing of this system other than the fact of its existence and that many Kreelan warships are already there. And already we have made potentially fatal assumptions about it.

“The third group, Heraklion,” Laskowski continued, her voice slowing as she sought to impress the president with the third group’s real significance, “is the smallest of the three, but carries the greatest destructive power of all our forces. Should it be necessary and you authorize it, Mr. President, this group will employ thermium weapons against the planets in the system, and the kryolon devices we have brought along can help ensure… a final solution to the Kreelan problem.”

“I’ve heard of the thermium devices,” Borge said, intrigued, “but not of the kryolons. What are those?” He had not been briefed on the full array of military hardware prior to the fleet’s sailing, but such details he found utterly fascinating.

“Kryolon bombs are proverbial ‘ultimate weapon,’ Gospodin Prezident,” Zhukovski rumbled, interrupting Laskowski’s monopoly on the man’s attention. “They were designed many years ago, to destroy star of enemy system, and thus planets in orbit. They have been in carefully guarded storage for these