In Her Name

“We must stop her,” Zhukovski said. “They will know–”

“Security alert, Brig Four!” the ship’s intercom announced. “ISS detachments to the brig, on the double! Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”

“That tears it,” Braddock said, getting to his feet. He went over to a cabinet boasting a cipher lock, punched in some numbers, and opened it.

“What are you doing?” Enya asked.

Braddock withdrew two blasters. “Jodi was always paranoid that Nicole should have something to protect herself with,” he told them. “She gave these to her on her birthday a few years ago, and Nicole promised Jodi she would keep them with her.” He shook his head. “Nutcases, both of them. Thank God.”

After checking to make sure the weapons were loaded and carried a full charge, he handed one to Enya, keeping the other for himself. Zhukovski wore his own sidearm.

Zhukovski opened the door, leading the other two out into the corridor. “Where do you think she will go?” he asked Braddock.

“Where else would a pilot go?” he replied. “Hangar deck.”

* * *

Nicole had led Reza and the others through a maze of passageways and service tunnels to avoid being spotted by the alerted security teams and the damage repair crewmen whose duties required them to move through the ship while at battle stations. They were only a few yards from the last set of blast doors separating them from the hangar deck when Warspite shuddered and her metal body screamed in agony. The four of them were hurled against the bulkhead as the battleship recoiled under a direct hit, the already dim corridor lights flickering, dying.

Even as the echoes of the hit died away, Nicole could hear the sound of thunder beyond the blast door. The red tell-tales on the control panel told her all she needed to know.

“Hangar deck has been hit! It’s venting air to space!” she shouted above the howling of hangar deck’s air supply whirling away into vacuum on the other side of the bulkhead, just as the dim red emergency lights flickered on.

“Behind us!” Shera-Khan warned as several dim shapes appeared from the crimson murk of the corridor.

In the blink of an eye, a shrekka appeared in Tesh-Dar’s hand, its lethal blades already tearing into their target in the elder warrior’s mind. The muscles of her arm tensed in a pattern no less precise, yet infinitely more elegant, than any machine could have calculated.

Evgeni Zhukovski would have died had Reza not been an arrow’s breath faster than his priestess.

“He is a friend,” he told her as his hand gently touched her arm. He did not have to grab her or restrain her. She reacted instantly. Her arm relaxed. Slightly.

“Tony!” Nicole exclaimed, her face a mask of anguish as her husband embraced her. It had nearly killed her to stun him, but there was no way she could have explained what she had to do, and she did not want him to be associated with her crime. Then she noticed Zhukovski. “Admiral! What are you doing–”

“We have no time for unnecessary words, commander,” he cut her off. Nodding to Reza, then to the two Kreelans, he said, “After forty years in Navy was I ready to commit mutiny, commander. This day even that has gone awry. Now we are all fugitives, with no way to escape.” He gestured to the blast doors.

Warspite took another hit, worse this time. They found themselves curled up on the floor against the starboard bulkhead, a cloud of dust in the air from the shock.

Zhukovski noted with alarm that Warspite’s return fire was starting to lose its cadence, becoming more random, sporadic. Fire control was breaking down. “Flagship is hurt,” he told them. “Badly, I think.”

Reza felt a minute fluctuation in the artificial gravity. It was a very, very bad sign. “Engineering has sustained damage,” he told them. “Our warships” – Kreelan warships – “must be concentrating on Warspite. We must get away, and soon.” He turned to Nicole. “What is left on this ship that could get to the moon orbiting the Homeworld?”

“The captain’s gig, but that is all the way forward.”

“Then that is where we must go.”

“But Reza,” Nicole said, “we will have to go through the main corridors! There will be no way to avoid the security patrols.”

He glanced at Tesh-Dar, then turned to Nicole, his face a grim, alien mask. “They shall not stop us.”

“There may be another way,” Zhukovski growled. He stood at the wall, scrutinizing a miniature data display he held in his hand. Reza could see the trace of a smile, well hidden in the older man’s beard, shining in the crimson light of the battle lanterns. He looked like Satan himself. “Borge has sent for Golden Pearl, as I thought he would,” he told them. “He is abandoning ship.”

“If we could get to it first…” Enya mused. The thought sent a chill up her spine. They were actually trying to make their way to the enemy’s capital. But to do… what?

She shook her head. Whatever it was they were about to attempt, it was the only thing left that they could do.

“They are going to attempt docking at main gangway airlock,” Zhukovski repeated from the interface. “We have less than eight minutes to get there.”

“Let’s move it, then,” Braddock said gruffly.

Had Jodi been there, she would have recognized the voice of the hard-bitten gunnery sergeant who had looked after her on a backwater world, seemingly so long ago.

* * *

The battle was not going well, President Borge lamented angrily. He was furious at the failure of Grand Admiral L’Houillier and Warspite’s captain to keep the ship – and himself – safe from peril while annihilating the enemy. He would have had them both shot, but the second Kreelan salvo to penetrate Warspite’s failing shields had speared through the hull and destroyed the bridge. It was only a stroke of divine intervention that Borge had been in his private quarters, watching the battle develop with the Confederation’s chief leaders: his own subordinates.

“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” Laskowski reported over the comm unit that Borge held in his hand. “The reports are true. Ships throughout the fleet are picking up gravity spikes: more Kreelan ships are inbound.” Her face was blackened and bloodstained. She happened to have been on her way back from the intel section to the flag bridge when the latter was blasted into wreckage. Had she passed through one more blast door on her short journey, she would have been dead. Like L’Houillier and the others. This was the worst moment in her life, the most difficult thing she had ever done. “I suggest we withdraw, sir. Immediately.”

Borge’s face flushed red on its way to purple. “We will do no such thing, admiral!” he snapped viciously. “We are winning! Your own estimates,” he shook a handful of flimsies at the comm unit, “say so! We will return to Confederation space victorious or not at all,” he went on softly against the background of firing and periodic hits absorbed by Warspite’s thousands of tons of armor. “And if you or anyone else suggests such a traitorous idea again, I will have you shot. Do you understand, admiral?”

Laskowski choked back her fear. The honeymoon, it seemed, was over. “Yes, sir,” she replied carefully. “In that case, I request permission to transfer my flag to Southampton. Sir. Warspite will be untenable soon, and the flag bridge is gone.”

Borge grunted. Furious as he was, he could hardly deny that request as he made his own way to another vessel to carry on his crusade, forging humanity’s future upon the ruins of the Empire. “Very well, admiral. Carry on.” With that, he snapped off the comm link. “Bloody incompetents,” he cursed to his aide, absently handing her the comm unit.

“Don’t be concerned, sir,” the woman said soothingly as she retrieved the device and stowed it carefully in the black case that also contained the control codes for the kryolon weapons that were stowed aboard another ship. Curiously, no one knew – except for the president himself – which ship that was. “We knew there would be some losses on our side. This is simply a minor inconvenience.”

The two of them followed a squad of ISS guards, and behind them was a trail of senators and council members – his trusted lieutenants – that made up the bulk of the Confederation’s government, corrupt though it now was.

“It is sloppy work, Elena,” Borge said as they followed the guards around yet another bend in the long march