EPILOGUE

President McKenna sat in a room deep in the heart of the presidential complex. It was surprisingly small and unassuming, considering the importance of the conversations that took place around the oval table at its center.

With her sat Minister of Defense Joshua Sabine, Admiral Tiernan, General Singh, and Secretary of State Hamilton Barca. General Sharine Metz, commander of the Terran Aerospace Defense Force, was also present. Metz was still angry that her service had been unable to participate in the defense of Keran, but part of her couldn’t help but be relieved after hearing of the losses the other services had suffered. 

This was the first unofficial debriefing that had been called by the president upon the fleet’s return. The summary of the battle that Tiernan delivered had been more than sobering.

“So, you lost a third of your ships, admiral,” McKenna said, looking at the room’s display screen and the brutal list of losses it showed in stark text.

“Yes, Madam President,” Tiernan said tightly. He was ready for the axe to fall. While the inevitability of being relieved had eaten at him like acid, he knew there was far more at stake than just his career or his pride. Had he been in McKenna’s shoes he would not have hesitated to cashier an officer who had lost a full third of his fleet. The president had given him very strict instructions that he was not to sacrifice his fleet as a fighting force, but that’s essentially what he had done when he and Lefevre had decided to go after the Kreelan force in high orbit. He had been appalled at how many ships were missing when Ticonderoga arrived at the rendezvous point. He had taken a high stakes gamble and lost. 

She fixed him with her gaze, and the others in the room suddenly found other things to look at. They knew what was coming, too.

But, as she had on other occasions, McKenna surprised them. “Under the circumstances, Admiral, you and your crews did an amazing job,” she told him. “I would have expected you to have lost far more of the fleet. And had you been given the ships and resources we had originally planned on, I suspect the battle might have gone a bit more in our favor.”

Tiernan blinked, taken completely off-balance. “Ma’am, I’ve already prepared my resignation and retirement papers,” he said automatically, as if he hadn’t heard a word she had just said. He had practiced this conversation so many times on the trip home that his brain simply hadn’t caught up with the reality.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, admiral,” Sabine, his direct boss, told him with a smile. “The president and I are of one mind on this. The losses suffered by the expeditionary force were extremely heavy. No one can dispute that. But you, and General Ray’s troops in the ground battle, carried out the spirit of the president’s orders.”

“You might have been able to preserve more of your ships had you pulled out of the system before the final engagement with the Kreelan fleet,” McKenna told him, “but that would have left our relations with the Alliance in a shambles. I’ll say this only in this room, and it is never to be repeated: as great a tragedy as losing Keran might be, it is one we could diplomatically and politically afford in terms of Earth’s standing in the human sphere. But we could not afford to leave the Alliance fleet hanging. That would have been an unmitigated disaster in this situation. Admiral,” she told him, “I want you to know that the sacrifice of your ships and crews, and the sacrifice of General Singh’s troops, was not in vain.”

As if on cue, the door opened quietly and one of her aides poked his head in. 

“He’s here, Madam President,” he said.

“Show him in, please.” McKenna watched her companions as they all looked toward the door, curiosity evident on their faces.

Ambassador Laurent Navarre of Avignon stepped into the room, and the others came to their feet in surprise. All but President McKenna, of course.

“Mr. Ambassador,” Barca said, taking Navarre’s hand, “what a pleasant surprise.” With a slight but unmistakeable emphasis on the last word, he glanced over his shoulder at the president, who remained silent.

“Please, Hamilton,” Navarre told him as he took the big man’s hand and shook it, “you may blame me for the cloak and dagger antics. I specifically requested that President McKenna keep my presence here a secret, even from you.”

“Especially from me, you mean,” Barca told him with a smile as Navarre shook the hands of the others. 

“Madam President,” he said as he came to McKenna. She stood, and he took her hand and kissed it. “Always a great honor.”

“The honor is all mine,” she told him, smiling despite herself at the man’s charm. You can take the Frenchman out of France, she thought, but you can’t take France out of the Frenchman. “But I have to admit we’re all curious about the, as you put it, ‘cloak and dagger antics.’”

“Yes,” he said heavily as he waited until she had regained her seat, then sat down with the others around the table. He glanced at the information on the wall display, but only briefly. What it showed came as no surprise to him. “I come unofficially as a representative of the Alliance,” he told them. “I am here so soon because my government arranged for a series of couriers to relay news as quickly as possible. Very expensive, but in this case a bargain.” He licked his lips, clearly upset about what he had to tell them. “Madam President, my friends, the Alliance is in a state of near-panic. As you know, the fleet led by Amiral Lefevre was the greater part of our space combat power, and the ground divisions that were lost on Keran were our best troops. The opposition in the parliaments of every planet of the Alliance is calling for a vote of confidence against the Alliance Prime Minister, saying that the current government has left the entire Alliance open to alien invasion.”

“But the opposition parties were the strongest proponents of sending the fleet in the first place!” Tiernan blurted, looking at Barca, who was shaking his head, not in disbelief, but in disgust. The opposition’s reaction came as no surprise to him.

“Too true, amiral,” Navarre said, “but they are equally free to blame the current government for any disasters. And what happened to Amiral Lefevre’s fleet and the ground forces can only be considered a disaster. The greatest defeat in a single battle, perhaps, since Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.”

“How many ships did you lose?” McKenna asked.

“Lefevre sailed with just over one hundred and fifty warships, including half a dozen resupply ships,” he told her, the pain of Lefevre’s loss clearly written on his face. “Only fifty-seven returned, most of them damaged. And all ten ground divisions were virtually wiped out, although the Légion étrangère suffered the worst: of the twenty combat regiments deployed to Keran, only a few hundred legionnaires survived.”

“It wasn’t just about the numbers,” Tiernan interjected. “We did the right thing, making a stand there and not just letting the enemy walk in with their swords swinging. Even with the second fleet the Kreelans sent in at the end, if we had only had a few dozen more ships and a better idea of what to expect before we went in, I think we might have been able to hold them off. Our two fleets worked extremely well together, even without tightly linked command and control.”

“No one would agree with you more than me, amiral,” Navarre reassured him. “And that, truly, brings us to why I am here.” He looked at the faces around the room, his gaze finally settling on the president. “The Alliance Prime Minister would like to establish a new government, an interplanetary government that goes beyond the Francophone worlds, beyond the existing Alliance Française.”

“Earth constituencies would never agree to become part of the Alliance,” Barca interjected, shaking his head. “No matter how much sense it may make. We went through hell years ago just to form the planetary government.”

“You misunderstand, mon ami,” Navarre corrected him gently. “What we propose is the formation of a completely new interplanetary government, a confederation of all humanity, if you will, based on the original principles of the Human Sphere Defense Agreement proposal. In the aftermath of Keran, all of the planetary prime ministers of the Alliance support this, although in secret - for now. We believe that if Earth and the Alliance Française formally unite, other planetary governments will follow suit.” He paused. “Especially once word of the Keran disaster reaches all the governments. There is likely to be an interstellar panic, and we must avoid it as much as possible, and concentrate our efforts on building up our defenses.”

“Ambassador,” Tiernan interjected, “with all due respect, before the deployment to Keran we couldn’t even get your government to accept or even consider, even though it was gratis, critical hardware and software that would have helped our fleets work together.”

“I assure you,” Navarre told him, “that situation no longer pertains, mon amiral. Let me put it to you plainly: both the planetary and Alliance governments - majority and opposition, both - are terrified. And with good reason. We stand no hope of defending ourselves unless we can rebuild our fleet, and quickly. And a unified government with Mankind’s homeworld right now makes a great deal of political sense.” He gave them an ironic grin. “Fear opens many doors that before were firmly shut.”

“It’s going to be a hard sell to the Terran Congress,” Barca told her.

“No, it won’t,” the president said coldly. “I’ve assured every member of Congress who voted against the appropriations bills for the expeditionary force that I’ll make sure every human being on this planet knows that they were against building the fleet that might have saved Keran and held the Kreelan menace at bay. I don’t expect this lovely honeymoon to last long, but for now we can count on a great deal of support from Congress. Right now they’re tripping over themselves to build out our original appropriations, more than tripling the size of the original fleet we wanted to build over the next three years. Assuming we have that long.” She turned back to Navarre. “But there will be problems setting up a government such as you propose, the same ones that killed the Human Sphere Defense Agreement proposal.”

“Namely,” Barca said, “who runs the show, and how to keep the leadership position from becoming a political plum for the ‘haves’ in the eyes of the ‘have-nots.’”

“We have a solution for that much of it, I believe,” Navarre said. “We propose that the new government’s leader - president or prime minister - should be nominated from Earth alone. Earth has the greatest industrial capacity of any single planet in the human sphere, and, despite the differences among the various planetary governments, it is a symbolic home to us all. This will not be a hard sell, as you say, in the current climate. The Alliance will need some concessions, of course, but on that point agreement has already been made.” He turned to President McKenna and smiled. “Madam President, I believe you may be in for a promotion.”

“Now that we’ve sorted out that minor detail,” Tiernan said quietly, an uncharacteristically worried expression on his face, “we only have one other thing to worry about.” The others turned to him with questioning looks. “Where, and when, are the Kreelans going to strike next?”

* * *

Colonel Sparks was still in a great deal of pain from his injuries, but it paled in comparison to the sorrow he had endured in the weeks before he was able to bull his way out of the hospital. He had spent the time writing letters, by hand with pen and paper, from dawn until dusk, to the kin of his dead soldiers. Two thousand seven hundred and twenty-three, all told. Most of the letters had been brief; some had not. All of them had been heartfelt. Sparks was in many ways a hard and difficult man, but his soldiers were his family, and he refused to rest until he had reached out and touched the family or loved ones, or in some cases simply a friend, of every man and woman who had died under his command. He had written letters for all of them. All but one.

Among all the 7th Cavalry troopers who had made their final stand on Keran, there was one to whom they all owed their very lives. Standing now at the front porch of an old-style farm house surrounded by acres of golden wheat, in what had once been the American state of Iowa, he knocked on the sturdy but time- and weather-worn front door. In the window next to the door hung a small flag with a white background and red trim around the edges. In the center was a single gold star.

Sparks wore his dress blues, which as fate would have it was of a design loosely based on the uniform worn by cavalrymen when horses were the standard mode of transportation. Today there were no spurs, no flamboyant cavalry officer’s hat. But there was a sword, held reverently in his white-gloved hands.

With him stood Sergeant Hadley, also wearing his dress blue uniform, and Stephanie Guillaume in a trim black dress. She wasn’t here as a journalist, over the vehement protestations of her editor, who went ballistic at her snubbing what he had claimed was a once-in-a-lifetime human interest story. Steph knew that this would hardly be the only opportunity for someone who wanted to follow a story like this: the war would be filled with countless opportunities to report on stories of personal tragedy. She was here purely out of respect for a woman she had known only a very brief time. And to give her thanks to someone she had never met.

After a moment, movement could be heard inside. The door opened, swinging inward on well-oiled hinges. A man in his early fifties, as sturdy and weather-worn as the door to the house, looked out at them through the screen door. 

“Mr. Coyle?” Sparks said, trying to force his voice to be clear. But despite his best efforts, his throat had choked up on him.

The man blinked at the uniforms, and then said quietly, cocking his head toward the flag with the gold star hanging in the window, “The Army already notified us.” 

“I understand that, sir,” Sparks told him. “I was Patty’s commander. I was only released from the hospital today, or I would have come to deliver the news myself.”

“Who is it, John?” said a woman’s voice from deeper in the house. Her face appeared beside her husband, and Steph could barely hold back her tears. Like her husband, the woman was in her fifties, and time hadn’t treated her kindly. But her face was unmistakably that of her daughter.

“I’m Colonel James Sparks, ma’am,” Sparks said through the screen door. “Your daughter, Patty, was under my command when she...when she died.” He bit his lip, trying to stave off his own tears. He had delivered the news of the deaths of his men and women to many other parents and loved ones, but for some reason this was different. “This is Sergeant Jason Hadley and Miss Stephanie Guillaume,” he went on, introducing his companions. “We wanted to come by and pay our respects to you and your husband. The other soldiers of the regiment...well, they all wanted to come, but I figured it had best be just a few of us. I know this must be a terribly difficult time for you, but your daughter...your daughter was a very special woman. A very special soldier.”

John Coyle just stood there staring at them, saying nothing.

Gently pushing past her husband, she opened the screen door. “I’m Elaine,” she told him. “Please, colonel, do come in.” As she led them in, passing by her husband, she told Sparks in a quiet voice that echoed her own pain, “I apologize for my husband, colonel. Patty was always his little girl, even after she joined the Army. And he...he hasn’t been able to grieve for her. He’s still in shock, and I worry about him. I don’t know that he’s really accepted that she’s gone.”

Inside the house, sitting in the living room, Mrs. Coyle offered them something to drink, but they all declined. She sat down beside her husband on a sofa that, like them, had seen better times than these.

“We already know she’s dead,” John Coyle said woodenly.

“I know that, sir,” Sparks told him, holding his gaze steadily. “I didn’t come here to tell you that she died. I simply wanted to tell you about how she lived. How she saved hundreds of her fellow soldiers. Had it not been for your daughter, not a single one of the soldiers of my regiment, including the three of us, would have made it home alive. Us and the survivors of two regiments of the Alliance Foreign Legion. She saved us all.”

Elaine Coyle had her arm around her husband’s shoulders, and she nodded appreciatively at what Sparks was saying. Her eyes misted over, but she had come to grips with Patty’s death. 

John Coyle simply stared at the coffee table.

“I realize that it’s no consolation, but your daughter is being submitted for a Medal of Honor,” Sparks went on. “Lord knows she earned it.

“But I have something more personal I wanted to give you to honor her memory.” He held out the saber he had brought, an exact duplicate of the one he had fought with and lost on Keran. Every bit of the sword and its scabbard had been polished until it gleamed. “This is a cavalry saber, the very same as those last used by the horse soldiers of the 7th Cavalry Regiment centuries ago. Like me, it’s an anachronism, but it’s the most fitting thing an old cavalryman could think of to represent your daughter’s spirit and determination.”

Elaine smiled uncertainly as she made to take the weapon, but suddenly her husband reached out to grasp it, taking the scabbard in both hands. He held the sheathed sword in his lap and stared at it, running a hand along its glossy surface.

Then, for the first time since being told about his daughter’s death, the tears came. Cradling the saber as if it were his little girl so many years ago, yet only yesterday, John Coyle wept with grief.

* * *

On La Seyne, Emmanuelle Sabourin saw the news about the formation of a new interplanetary government, the Confederation of Humanity, that would bring together the Alliance with Earth, and any other worlds that wanted to join for mutual protection against the Kreelan menace. 

Sitting in a café on a side street in the capital city of Rouen, sipping at a cup of strong coffee, she watched the reaction of the people around her as the news was broadcast over the planetary web. Most, she saw, were happy about the news. It gave them some hope that humanity might have a chance against the aliens.

Of that, Sabourin was not so sure. She herself should not have been here, relaxing like a tourist. She should be dead with the rest of the crew of the Jean Bart. But in an ironic twist of fate, when Amiral Lefevre was distributing the Terran Marines among the Alliance ships, someone had miscounted and the team earmarked for one of the destroyers was short by two people. Sabourin had volunteered to go with them. Emotionally drained as she had been, she wasn’t about to sit by and leave one of their ships with a weak ability to defend itself against the horrid boarders. As fate would have it, the destroyer, while damaged by enemy fire, had managed to survive the last frantic engagement and had jumped to safety. 

What caught her eye in the news report was the proposal to formally merge the combat forces of all constituent planets into a unified Confederation military, including a navy, ground forces (which people had begun to talk about as a Territorial Army), an aerospace arm, and a marine force that would fight from the ships of the fleet as the Terran Marines had at Keran. As she herself had. The report said that the new Confederation Marine Corps (the name had not been officially blessed, as the new government did not technically exist) was in desperate need of any personnel with combat experience to help train the wave of volunteers that was flooding into military recruiting centers across Earth and the Alliance worlds.

Sabourin only considered the thought as long as it took her to finish her coffee. Then she picked up her satchel and headed down the street toward the naval headquarters building where she had been temporarily posted. Her new commander had told her in no uncertain terms that she could have whatever assignment she wanted. But she had been unable, unwilling, perhaps, was more accurate, to decide on what her next posting should be.

Until now.

* * *

Sergent Chef Roland Mills felt very conspicuous wearing the red ribbon of the Légion d'honneur (Commandeur) on his uniform as he strode off the Earth-orbit shuttle from Africa Station onto the tarmac at the newly renamed Confederation Marine Corps Headquarters at Quantico in what was once the United States. The Légion d'honneur was the highest award the Alliance had for gallantry in the face of the enemy, much as the Medal of Honor was for the Terran military forces. Precious few legionnaires had won it in recent history, and few of those had been awarded a class higher than Chevalier. The reason Mills felt self-conscious about it was that he really had no other decorations to speak of, other than a couple of deployment medals. The bright red ribbon blazed from the drab camouflage of his battle uniform.

He was among the advance party, led by Colonel Grishin, sent by the Legion to coordinate its incorporation as a regiment in the new Marine Corps. Mills knew that the bureaucratic battles fought to keep the Legion as a separate entity had been every bit as fierce in their own way as the Battle for Keran, as it was now known. But in the end the Legion’s leadership had been given a simple choice: become part of the new Marine Corps and continue to fight as an elite unit, or be dismantled and absorbed into the new Territorial Army formations that were being formed for homeland defense on every planet that was planning to join the nascent Confederation Government. 

Faced with such an ultimatum, and after suffering the near-total loss of every single existing combat regiment, they had chosen for the Legion to become part of the Corps.

Mills shook hands with the greeting party, a group of Marines who, like him and most of the other legionnaires present, were veterans of Keran. But the term “veteran” was relative: none of the Marines here had actually fought the enemy, while Mills and the other legionnaires had seen more than their fair share of combat against the Kreelans. The Marines - the other Marines, Mills corrected himself - were eager to make up for that shortcoming, and wanted to take advantage of the legionnaires’ experience.

As with nearly everyone he had met who knew what had happened on Keran, the very first thing they wanted to hear about was the famous hand-to-hand battle Mills had fought against the huge Kreelan warrior. 

Mills had always thought that telling the tale would get easier over time through sheer mindless repetition of his greatest adrenalin rush. But it hadn’t. It had only gotten more difficult with every telling. He had never been one to have nightmares, but after returning home the warrior began to haunt his dreams. More often than not, he woke in a cold sweat, breathing as if he had run a marathon, with the memory of her snarling blue face and ivory fangs fading like an afterimage in his eyes. He was smart enough to know that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress, but he was too proud to seek counseling. He also knew that the Legion and the Corps needed him and those like him who had survived, and there simply wasn’t time to waste kibitzing with a head doctor. And he would lose any chance he might have to go back into combat. Of that, more than anything else, was he afraid.

As he began to tell his latest group of eager listeners of his exploits, he put his hands on his thighs under the table so no one could see how badly his tightly clenched fists were shaking.

* * *

Lieutenant Amelia Cartwright, now an officer of the Terran (soon to be Confederation) Navy, sat in the pilot’s chair of the recently commissioned military courier Nyx. Her hands tensed on the controls as the navigation computer went through its litany of announcements prior to the ship’s reemergence into normal space. This would be the sixth mission she had flown in as many weeks from a support ship that had been positioned roughly a day’s jump from Keran: far enough to hopefully avoid detection by Kreelan ships in the system, yet close enough to minimize the travel time for the couriers. 

The design of the Nyx and her sisters emphasized speed and maneuverability above all else, and they were being used to monitor what was happening to Keran. The news they brought back was increasingly grim.

Any hopes the human sphere had of retaking Keran any time soon, if ever, had quickly been dispelled after the first few reconnaissance missions had returned. Keran was being transformed with frightening rapidity. While the changes being made appeared to be compatible with human life, the fundamental features of the planet were being reshaped by alien hands. The atmosphere was being altered with a combination of compounds that gave it a slight magenta hue. On the ground, large areas of the planet’s deserts were turning dark, as if they were being transformed into black seas whose composition eluded every attempt at analysis. 

It was increasingly difficult to ascertain the fate of Keran’s people, but everyone expected the worst. Every reconnaissance mission brought back fewer and fewer recordings of transmissions from the surface, and every single one of them was a cry of agonizing despair. The Kreelans were killing them. All of them. As best anyone had been able to piece together, the aliens herded groups of them into arenas built for the purpose, to fight and die exactly as the crew of Aurora had. Men, women, children: it made no difference. They were forced to fight, and if they didn’t, they were simply killed. Humanity was now in a war for survival, and the loser would become extinct. 

“Standby for transpace sequence,” the navigation computer purred. Cartwright had programmed a very close emergence this time, using the data from her last jump to refine the coordinates. It would be right on the theoretical edge of where the planet’s gravity well would pose a major danger during their reemergence.

As the computer counted down the last seconds, Cartwright wondered how many ships would be in-system this time. The average had been a hundred ships, about half of them cruisers and the rest destroyers. What no one had been able to figure out was how the Kreelans were managing to change the planet so quickly without having a huge number of ships hauling in the necessary materials and machinery. It was as if they were simply doing it by magic. And that wasn’t possible. Was it?

“...three...two...one,” the computer said. “Normal space emergence.”

Hyperspace dissolved into a panorama of the deepest black, and where Keran should be was...

“Holy Mother of God,” Sid, now a lieutenant, junior grade in the Navy, breathed beside her. 

The surface of Keran, the outlines of its continents where land met the sea, had changed. The deserts that had been turning dark were now gone, replaced by plains of grass. The ship’s telescope array hunted the unfamiliar landscape for the major cities. Even during the last mission, they had still been clearly visible, even as burned out scars in the landscape. Now...they were gone, erased as if they had never existed. 

“Jesus,” Cartwright whispered. “How is this possible?”

“I don’t know,” Sid told her, his eyes wide, frightened by the changes in the planet below. “And it looks like they have more ships.”

The tactical display showed nearly two hundred ships in near-Keran space and around its moons. The ship’s telescope array took images of them, as well. As with the planet’s deserts earlier, both moons were being consumed by a sea of blackness, some unknown and unfathomable material that denied its secrets to human science.

“Just a suggestion,” Sid told her tightly as Nyx sped ever closer to the planet and the warships sailing around it, “but wouldn’t it be a good idea to jump out?”

“Not yet,” she said, adjusting the ship’s course minutely. “I want to get all the data we can. Are you picking up any signals?” On previous missions, they had always been able to contact someone on the surface.

Sid didn’t answer her right away as he worked the ship’s instruments. After a few precious minutes, he said, “Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”

They shared a glance, then looked back at the globe of the planet, now alien and forbidding. Cartwright’s hands clenched as she fought to keep her emotions under control. She knew that there were most likely still survivors on the planet, fleeing or fighting for their lives. But during the last reconnaissance mission they had picked up hundreds of different transmitters, radio and laser-links. Now there was nothing but shattering silence. Survivors there might yet be, but the silence on the airwaves told how effective the Kreelans had been in hunting them down.

Nyx flew onward for another minute, then two, when half a dozen of the cruisers that were headed to intercept her were almost close enough to fire.

“Time to go, boss,” Sid reminded her.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Cartwright said grudgingly as she hauled the ship around in a tight chandelle turn. 

Five long minutes later they reached their jump point, and Nyx disappeared into hyperspace.

* * *

Tesh-Dar stood upon the central dais of one of the arenas on this, the newest world to be claimed for the Empire. Reshaping this planet was a a reflection of the compulsion of her race to bend the universe to their will. It was not for want of more living space: the Empire was so vast that Tesh-Dar could have traveled most of her life in the swiftest of starships, and still not reached from one far frontier to the other. The Empire spanned ten thousand suns and even more planets. When there had been need of a world for a particular purpose, or in a particular place as suited the Empress, often as not the builders had simply created it. Such was the power of Her Children.

But her race lived and breathed for battle. And here on this planet, in this arena, the final battle was being fought, pathetic though it had become. A brace of her warriors, using only the weapons they had been born with, faced off against the last human survivors. They had been very adept at evading their hunters, but at last Tesh-Dar had called an end to the game. Great wheels were turning in the heart of the Empire, and this first great combat between humans and Her Children was to be brought to a final ending.

The humans before her were dirty and starving. A ten of males and half as many females were all that remained of the planet’s original population. In the many matches Tesh-Dar had watched as the humans had been sacrificed to the demands of the Way of her people, she had seen many fight bravely; some had clearly cried for mercy, of which there was none; others stood with what she admired as a quiet dignity, refusing to fight, until they at last were painlessly put to death. None were tortured or forced to endure pain beyond what was experienced in battle in the arena. Tesh-Dar understood the concept of cruelty, but did not believe it applied to her people. Their Way was extraordinarily difficult, and death came all too easily. But pain was never inflicted needlessly, or as an end unto itself.

One by one, the humans fell to her warriors. But these humans, the last upon this planet, did not give up, and did not surrender. They fought to the last, and died with honor.

* * *

In the capital city on his home planet of Nagano, Commander Ichiro Sato ignored the veiled stares he received as he made his way along a crowded street that led to his childhood home. He wore his dress black uniform, which made him stand out even more among the dour salarymen in cheap suits and the women in colorful kimonos, eyes downcast, who streamed past him. Around his neck he wore the Terran Medal of Honor, the only one to be granted for the battle of Keran that wasn’t posthumous. He hadn’t known most of those who had received “The Medal,” as it was often called. But his own decoration served to remind him of the one he had: Gunnery Sergeant Pablo Ruiz. Sato’s recommendation to award Ruiz The Medal had been taken up-chain almost without comment, followed by Silver Stars for bravery in the face of the enemy for every man and woman of McClaren’s Marine detachment. Ensign, now Lieutenant, Bogdanova and Senior Chief Petty Officer DeFusco also wore Silver Stars, and every single survivor of the McClaren had received at least a Bronze Star. They had all earned it. And more.

Walking beside him, Stephanie held an exquisitely wrapped gift. She and Sato had spent nearly an hour getting the wrapping just so. She had thought it a fun but ultimately wasteful use of time, until he explained how important the wrapping of a gift was in Nagano’s culture, and that it was as important as the gift itself. 

And the gift? Two fresh pineapples in a box. She had laughed at him when he had first suggested it, but he was completely serious. “Listen, I know you don’t believe this,” he had told her, “but this is perfect! She absolutely loves pineapple, and they’re almost impossible to get on Nagano. My uncle managed to get some a few times - that’s where she first tasted it - but he must have paid a fortune.” 

“She,” of course, was his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since he had left for the Terran Naval Academy. Steph had suggested some gorgeous jewelry, but he only shook his head. “She doesn’t wear any.” It was hard for Steph to conceive of any woman not wanting to wear jewelry, but she had let it ride and trusted Ichiro’s advice. He hadn’t steered her wrong yet.

A few weeks before, they had both been at the commissioning of the first of the new shipyards that were being built in Earth orbit, where the keels of a dozen new warships were being laid down in a fast-build program that would have the new ships undergoing their first space trials in three months. One of them, the heavy cruiser Yura, would be Ichiro’s to command. 

The ceremony had been held on Africa Station, which, like the other orbital transfer points, was being radically enlarged to accommodate more traffic. While most of the attention had been riveted on the massive yards and the ships that were even now beginning to take shape, Sato had spent a considerable part of the ceremony staring out at the hulk of the Aurora, which rode quietly at anchor in the original space dock. The Navy had decided that she would never sail again, and would eventually be broken up. Part of him would have exchanged his new heavy cruiser for the old Aurora in an instant; another part was horrified at the thought of ever again setting foot on her decks.

Despite the maudlin thoughts about his old ship amid the martial pomp of the commissioning ceremony for the shipyards, the gathering on Africa Station was also one of joy: to a great deal of well-wishing and cat-calling, he and Steph announced their engagement and plans to marry. After returning from Keran, they quickly came to the conclusion that they were meant for each other. With him in command of a warship and her helping the government get people behind the formation of the Confederation, their married life would be difficult, to say the least. But they were determined to make it work. They knew now that the universe was not a hospitable place, and it was an immense comfort just knowing that they had each other to love and hold onto.

They arrived at the drab apartment building and rode up the cramped elevator to the fifteenth floor. Everything here was clean, almost antiseptic in appearance. And quiet. Their footsteps echoed as they walked down the tiled hall until they reached a certain door.

Looking one last time at Steph, who only nodded, Ichiro pressed the illuminated button that would let the occupants know they had visitors.

After a brief moment, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman of Japanese descent, not so different in appearance from a million others in the city. Physically she was still in the prime of beauty for those of her age, her face showing few wrinkles and only faint traces of gray in her otherwise lush raven hair. But her expression and eyes were blank, her thoughts and emotions carefully concealed, a defense mechanism developed over a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse.

“Greetings, Mother,” Ichiro said in Japanese, bowing his head.

For a moment, she said nothing, did nothing. She made no reaction at all. Then the veneer that had been her shield against the pain of her life, built up over decades, suddenly shattered and fell away. 

In that moment, she did what no self-respecting Nagano woman, even one who had been widowed only a week before when her hated husband had died of a burst aneurysm, would ever have admitted to: she burst into tears and took her only son in her arms.

* * *

LEGEND OF THE SWORD

The story of the Human-Kreelan war continues with Legend Of The Sword, the next novel of the In Her Name series. Click here to get your copy now! And don’t forget to join my newsletter so you can receive updates on my latest releases, giveaway contests, and more: just click here to subscribe.