In Her Name: The Last War by Michael R. Hicks Page B

officers had joined him in taking at least a token bite to eat of some of the fruit and other food the aliens had offered. At first he had thought the food must have been taken from the Aurora’s galley, but on further inspection he decided that the aliens had probably replicated it, just as they had the ship’s computer systems. As much as anything, he was curious about the taste, and wasn’t disappointed when he sampled one of the apples. It was delicious, and he quickly ate it down to the core, then drank some water.
    He noticed Yao moving slowly along the tables holding the weapons, looking at them carefully, and walked over to join him. He knew more about Yao’s background than anyone, except possibly Harkness, and he wanted his insights. “What do you think, Yao?” he asked quietly. Since they had arrived in this room, the aliens had relaxed their ban on the humans speaking to one another. He was keeping his voice down because he didn’t want the other members of the crew to hear.
    Yao paused and looked up at him with troubled eyes. “You realize what is coming, do you not, captain?” He glanced at the others, most of whom stood huddled in a fearful group near the center of the room, watching the warriors along the walls. “The crew...there is no way to prepare them.”
    McClaren’s mind had been grasping at possibilities, at outcomes that would at least give them a chance of survival. “I can’t accept that they’re just going to kill us,” he grated, “not after all this. What would be the point?”
    “The point may be irrelevant, captain,” Yao replied. “I believe we are to face a test of character,” Yao told him. “We will never know the reason behind it, for the aliens cannot communicate it to us, even if they wanted to, and we must accept that. But I do not believe that any of us are destined to leave this place alive.” His gaze hardened, revealing the warrior who dwelled within. “The best we may do is to earn their respect.”
    “I agree,” Amundsen said softly from behind them, having quietly moved over to join the discussion. Marisova, Harkness, and the two midshipmen stood with him. “I don’t see a positive end-game in this, captain. I realize that I’m usually considered a pessimist, and often enough that’s true. But this,” he gestured around them, at the weapons, at the portal that led onto the sands of the arena, then shook his head. “I see nothing here that gives me any hope. We’re sacrificial lambs.”
    “Kuildar mekh!” one of the warriors suddenly barked, startling the human survivors. As one, the other warriors lowered their heads and brought their left arms up to place an armored fist over their right breasts in some sort of salute. The clawless ones did the same.
    McClaren looked up toward the warrior who had spoken, wondering what was going on, when behind her a huge warrior walked right through the wall into the room . Had he not seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it. 
    “Jesus fucking Christ!” someone cried, and the group of crew members clustered toward the center of the room darted away from the apparition like a school of terrified fish.
    McClaren realized that it was the same warrior he had caught a glimpse of leaving the theater where they had reconstructed the ship’s computers. She was something different from the others, over and above however she had managed to walk through a solid wall. She was easily the tallest being in the room, standing a full head taller than McClaren, with the most impressive physique he had ever seen on a female (if inhuman) form. While her armor was a gleaming black just like the others, hers had some sort of rune of blazing cyan in the center of her breastplate. Her collar was also different, holding some sort of ornamentation at her throat that bore the same marking as her breastplate, and a dozen or more rows of the strange jeweled pendants that the other aliens, including the robed ones, wore