Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (11 page)

“The lieutenant is in the Hood’s medical lab, sir,” she said woodenly. “His injuries likely won’t permit his return to service.”

Kane stopped for a moment, his face carved from stone. “I see. On your last mission?”

“Yes, sir.”

The general nodded quietly, then shook his head slightly. “Well, I would have preferred better news there. Crow handled himself well on Hayden during the last push.”

“He did at that, sir,” Sorilla confirmed.

“Still, my reasoning stands,” Kane said after a moment. “If you had support for what you’re so obviously here about, I would be speaking with an officer. So, Sergeant, wow me.”

“General, sir, you know as well as I do that if we leave them be, they’ll be a gun at our back when the enemy fleet returns,” she said, clearly not feeling any need to sugarcoat things. “Leaving a dangerous guerilla force on-world is reckless at best, suicidal at worst.”

“We don’t have the forces to dig them out, Sergeant. They’ve already showed that,” he said evenly. “We lost most of our patrols until we pulled them back within the beams. The fact is that the enemy has better jungle fighters than we do.”

“Not than Hayden’s pathfinders and I, sir,” she said, her tone vehement. “Give me Reed, a spotter, and artillery support, and we’ll weed them out.”

“Funny, Sergeant, you don’t look like John Wayne,” Kane told her dryly. “And even the Duke knew enough to take a team.”

“My team is due to stand down,” she said stiffly, “and they need the time. This isn’t a combat mission, sir. What we need on Hayden are forward observers, calling in fire from the heavens, not a strike team.”

“Your team aren’t the only ones due to stand down, Sergeant,” Kane told her. Honestly he liked the idea, and it played well into his own sensibilities, but he wasn’t about to make it easy on her now. Especially not since she’d jumped the chain of command in bringing it directly to him, but since she was assigned to OPCOM, the distinction was a technicality as her position was outside his direct chain of command.

Just as well for the master sergeant,
he supposed. He would have had her on report and tossed in the brig for a couple days if she had tried it while under his command.

That said, OPCOM was not only a separate chain of command, but in many ways those within it held higher authority than their ranks would indicate.

“I’ll consider it,” he said finally, eyes flicking to the door. “Dismissed.”

“Sir!” She went to attention again, saluting perfectly before pivoting on her heel and marching out.

****

Sorilla left the office with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, she hadn’t gotten the permission she’d been seeking, but honestly she knew that had been a longshot at best. In reality, she supposed she had achieved the best case scenario in that he had promised to consider the request. Decisions at that level took time, and hopefully this one would come down in her favor.

She left a message for Tara, putting off the get-together they’d planned for later that day. Instead, Sorilla hitched a ride on the next transfer capsule to the Hood and immediately made her way to the armory.

Her armor was powered down, the power systems tended to degrade over time when kept at a combat charge, and she knew that she would also need to re-flash the suit’s system memory with the latest operating system code. Again, leaving a suit’s software running over long periods tended to result in trash building up in the oddest of places, eventually compromising the armor’s effectiveness.

It had been wiped after the last mission, and so she started the power-up sequence and began re-flashing the systems one by one while the suit charged from ship’s stores. She was preparing, just in case, to be sure, but on the assumption that she’d be receiving new orders shortly.

Bringing OPCOM powered armor to operational levels from storage was an involved process, precisely for those reasons. Like her weapons and kit, her life could…no, would depend entirely on the suit. In fact, it would likely depend continuously on the armor for prolonged periods. If something she had was going to fail, she’d much prefer it be anything…literally
anything
other than her armor. She could fight with her hands if need be, but she’d be hard pressed to breathe in space through her rifle.

Technically there were people assigned specifically to the task she was doing, but Sorilla didn’t know an Operator still breathing who let someone else secure and prep their gear.

****

There were few places Nadine Brookes enjoyed more than the observation deck of the USF Cheyenne when it wasn’t locked down for combat. The blast shields were pulled back, and beyond the foredeck of the big ship she could see Hayden floating there, a crescent of green and blue against the black of space. The other ships of the squadron, a few dozen kilometers away from the Cheyenne, were barely visible in the distance. Only their running lights gave them away as they drifted in a loose formation around the station counterweight.

It was a scene only a scant few tens of thousands could claim to have ever seen in all of human history. Probably less, in all honesty, since most of the early interstellar ships couldn’t exactly claim much in the way of a decent view. They’d been built for durability, almost as much as the Cheyenne, but back during the first generation of forge-cast ships, the technology wasn’t remotely as sophisticated as it had since become.

Ten thousand years of warfare,
she thought as she looked out on the serenity of creation,
and we can’t even escape it when we leave the Earth a hundred light-years in our rearview cameras. It’s a good thing that we are so very damned good at it.

The current war was unlike anything anyone had fought on Earth in centuries, however. The more she learned, either through research, analytical thought, or experience under fire, all made it feel like something an admiral during the Age of Empires might have been more comfortable with.

Valkyrie had been on assignment for over two years. That was two years away from home port and hundreds of years away from communications by any traditional method. Jump drones could carry FTL messages home, but the only way Earth could respond was if they knew where the taskforce would be, and there was no way they could stay still while in contested territory.

That placed ship captains and people like herself in positions of power that hadn’t even existed for centuries. She had to make decisions that could change the direction of the entire planet’s future. Some days she wanted anything but that responsibility, but in the darkest part of her heart, Nadine found a deep thrill in the knowledge that she held a power that hadn’t been in human hands since the Age of Empires.

Of course, one thing that hadn’t changed much since those days was the paperwork. Why it was still called that she didn’t know, but it was the bane of her existence. Every morning she opened her in-folder and found several pages of files waiting her attention. Most were only in need of a glance through before being sent off to the department they were intended for, but she had to sign off on everything above a certain level and check over several levels below that.

It was generally a grueling couple hours that took up most mornings, unless the taskforce was in a port of call…such as Hayden, for example, and then it took up most of her day.

Every day.

Today, however, she found a single short file in the electronic box that piqued her attention. It was flagged to her, not from one of the shipboard departments of Valkyrie, but from the station they were currently orbiting with.

From the offices of Brigadier Kane. Now what does he want?

As she read the file, she was both unsurprised and slightly piqued, though Nadine had to admit that she wasn’t sure who she was annoyed with. Kane for requesting the services of one of her OPCOM team who was clearly due for leave, not another deployment, or the master sergeant whose fingerprints she could read all over the request.

Nadine had never been face to face with Sergeant Aida; there had been no need of it and she preferred to leave such matters in the hands of the direct commanders of the units. In this case, that was generally Captain MacKay since the OPCOM team deployed from the HMS Hood. She was, however, aware of the master sergeant’s record and, honestly, was more annoyed with herself for not having expected this and had Aida restricted from the station until they got back from Earth-space.

She sighed, calling up the leave records, and found that Aida had indeed shipped out to the station on the first wave of pods. She didn’t bother querying the station concerning Aida’s activities there, those were obvious. Now she had to decide what to do about it, which was patently absurd. Admirals weren’t supposed to bother with sergeants directly, not even those assigned to OPCOM. But, then again, neither were brigadier generals, and apparently Kane had, so who was she to question it?

Besides, she’d wanted to meet the woman for some time, in all honesty, but had been too busy and had no real excuse to do so. Contrary to common opinion, being an admiral didn’t mean she got to do whatever she wanted in her fleet. She had to think of the effect her actions would have on everyone she dealt with, and the brass didn’t associate with non-coms for good reason.

I suppose this will do for an excuse
, she thought, keying open a comm. “Captain, I’ll need a shuttle pod prepped for my use.”

“Of course, Admiral. Heading to the station?”

“No, I want to visit the Hood.”

Rogers paused briefly before coming back. “Aye, ma’am, I’ll have Captain MacKay apprised?”

Nadine smiled slightly. “Of course, Captain.”

“Yes, ma’am. It’ll be ready shortly.”

Nadine stood up and kicked her way into a trajectory that would bring her to the access hatch that led from her offices to her quarters. She’d keep the meeting as low profile as was possible, but spacer whites were a requirement since she was going to have to meet with Jane MacKay at least briefly before seeing Aida. Not that meeting with MacKay was a chore, the woman was one of her finest analysts, but she just wasn’t the subject this time around.

*****

Parithalian Alliance Ship
Noble Venture

The background noise of space may seem silent to ears that only heard atmospheric vibrations, but not every species ‘listened’ in the same way. The Parithalian evolved on a set of worlds that
encouraged
alternate threat detection methodologies, and to the ship’s master of the
Noble Venture
, the open screens of the ship permitted the entry of an almost soothing background cavalcade of ‘sounds.’ The pop of a distant pulsar merely punctuated the local crackle of the nearby star, its distinct sound echoing off various planets and filtering back to the ship.

‘ Hearing’ the electromagnetic spectrum was one of the traits that made the Parths some of the best ship handlers in Alliance space, but at the moment it gave the master of the small flotilla cold comfort indeed.

Nothing is as it should be in these systems.

The Ros had detailed charts of the area, indicating standard navigation beacons at all the proscribed distances as well as signal boosters to maintain contact with Alliance space, but none of that was anywhere to be found. So, unless the Ros’El had fabricated their charts and developmental reports, it seemed that the aliens had wiped the systems clean of anything they encountered that wasn’t naturally supposed to be there.

As much as I might wish it otherwise, it’s highly unlikely that the Ros submitted false reports.
He sighed, shaking his head as he stepped back from the open viewing dome and tripped the signal to close the blast shields.

Now, it was certain that none of the things in question were hidden to any great degree. However, it spoke of a determined and meticulous people to go out and clean star system after star system of every piece of Alliance tech floating about. The deeper he brought his taskforce into disputed space, the more he was concerned by those very traits, more so than he was by the enemy capabilities themselves.

The flotilla was now only a single shift away from the system that had kicked off the whole mess, and he could feel the tensions rising among his crews just as much as they were climbing in his own self.

“SeQuin, how long until we reach the shift point?”

“Ninety path cycles, Master.”

Master of Ships Reethan Parath nodded absently as he made his way out of the observation bubble and headed back to his offices with the young adjutant in pursuit.

When they shifted into the disputed system, he expected a lot of the questions they had been gathering to be answered, most in ways he no doubt would not much appreciate.

“Order the handlers to ready their ships,” he told his adjutant, “and secure the flotilla for combat.”

“Yes, Master.”

They would have to shift in nearly blind, but that was in the nature of his duty. Serving in the Parth Navy meant that you were generally the first in and the last out of any conflict that shook the Alliance.

Reethan, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.

*****

HMS Hood

Sorilla laid her rifle beside the rest of the kit, having just finished checking every piece, processor, and relay line in the device. No word yet, but she would be ready if the orders she was hoping for came through.

Her pistol took only a few seconds to check and set aside. The metalstorm weapon only had fifty moving parts, and those were the bullets. All she had to do was run a wireless diagnostic check on the rounds in each of the magazines and she knew the gun was good to go.

The rest of her kit wasn’t nearly so easy to prep, however. Her armor was still running through electronic diagnostics, and when that was done, she’d have to visually inspect the material for damage from her last mission. The maintenance crews had already done that, but it wasn’t their life on the line and she had the time anyway.

Oddly, waiting had never been her strong suit, and now Sorilla had to almost physically restrain herself from checking the time constantly or, worse, actually calling the station to see if there were any messages. She knew that she’d find out when she found out and not before, but sitting around a base was never something she found palatable.