Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (12 page)

In the field she could be patient. Enemy actions happened on the enemy’s schedule unless you were very, very good or very,
very
lucky. She’d long since assimilated that fact into her mentality and could sit in the jungle and just wait with the best of them.

Unless the best of them include snipers, those guys are freaks.

That said, she knew that she had never managed to get her head wrapped around the fact that, sometimes, the brass
were
the enemy. Sure, they didn’t shoot at you, unless you’d really screwed up, but in many ways the upper brass acted very much like an enemy faction that you had to account for if you wanted to get your mission done right.

Still, hurrying up to wait for orders was one skill she’d never mastered, and Sorilla could just feel every tick of the clock on the wall as the seconds moved by. Or, rather, should have felt them as if there
were
a clock on the wall that had a second hand.

I’m with my dad on this, digital clocks just have no soul.

Sorilla sighed, returning her distracted mind to the task at hand, and went on with the physical check of her armor.

*****

“Admiral on deck!”

The whistle announcing her arrival echoed off the walls of the cargo bay. As large as they were, neither the Longbow nor Cheyenne class vessels had dedicated shuttle bays, so as she kicked out of the small shuttle pod used to ferry people between ships and stations, Admiral Nadine Brookes floated between the imposing bulk of an orbiter shuttle on one side and stacks of supply containers on the other.

People were lined up on the decks, feet locked to the floor by light magnetic heels. She glanced them over, mostly out of the corner of her eyes, but nodded appreciatively at the professional state of affairs. Not that she had expected any less, of course, this was the standard for greeting a visiting admiral.

Ahead of her, as she drifted freely down the bay, the captain of the Hood was waiting to greet her.

Jane MacKay was one of her most reliable officers, someone Nadine had learned to lean on and trust in a clinch. The British woman was a former science track officer, much like herself, and had come up through the ranks in the early days of the USF. The opening days of the war had torn the ever living hell out of the military ranks of the Fleet, leaving mostly science track officers to take up the slack while Earth’s militaries scrambled to provide new officers with battle experience for training.

She’d be glad enough for the help, was glad of what had already arrived even, but Nadine would take officers like MacKay over all the wet Navy battle experience in the universe.

Jane saluted as she drifted into position, two men with magnetic heels catching her arms and bringing Nadine down to the floor.

“Admiral,” Captain MacKay said crisply. “It’s an honor to have you aboard.”

“The honor is mine, Captain. As always, the Hood does not fail to impress.”

Jane smiled genuinely, clearly pleased by that statement. “The crew and I do try to please.”

“And you always succeed, in battle and without,” Nadine said. “Now, however, I was hoping to speak with you privately.”

“Of course.” MacKay gestured to the hatch behind her. “This way, Admiral.”

The hatch led to the main serviceways of the ship. They ringed the ship and were built so that people could move about during acceleration, so moving up toward the ‘bow’ of the ship was easily managed by pulling themselves along the ladders placed there to let climb in one-G. MacKay led them to the flag deck, and a few minutes later, Nadine found herself looking out over the lights that were Task Force Valkyrie from a very different perspective.

She couldn’t help but find the lights that belonged to the Cheyenne and studied them for a long moment while Jane MacKay waited quietly.

Finally, Nadine twisted about enough to settle her gaze on MacKay.

“I have to confess, I didn’t come over for a chat,” she said with a quirk of her lips. “Not with you at least.”

MacKay seemed puzzled, leaning forward slightly. “Pardon? Who did you come to speak with then?”

Nadine paused, considering her next words. “What do you know of Sergeant Aida?”

MacKay blinked, she hadn’t been expecting that. “American Special Forces, trainer specialist. She’s on our strike forces because no one has as much experience with the aliens as she does, given her time on Hayden. One of the best non-coms I have under my command, Admiral.”

“I received a request from Brigadier Kane to have her transferred back to Hayden,” Nadine said mildly, watching MacKay’s expression.

She wasn’t disappointed.

MacKay’s eyes widened first, then the British officer almost instantly scowled. “The sergeant and her team are due for a well-deserved leave, Admiral. I would like to officially note a protest against any such request.”

Nadine held her hand up, amused. “I’d hold off on that in your place.”

“Admiral, that team spent almost two
weeks
eating nothing but paste while on approach to the last world we took,” MacKay said. “After that, they humped through several hundred klicks of alien forests, jungle, and god alone knows what else…and
then
they assaulted a Ghoulie stronghold and rescued almost sixty PUCs. If anyone has a break coming—”

“Peace, Captain. I agree with you,” Nadine chuckled softly, holding her hand up.

MacKay let out a breath she’d be gathering to continue her protest. “Then why are you here, ma’am?”

“I’m here because I rather suspect that the sergeant herself is behind this little transfer request.”

MacKay started to say something, but paused and slowly closed her mouth as she considered that. Finally she scowled, looking more exasperated than angry this time. “Well, that just figures. Sounds like something she’d pull.”

“About what I suspected,” Nadine nodded. “I thought that it fit Aida’s psych profile.”

“It does,” MacKay confirmed. “She’s as stubborn as they come, and I know she considers Hayden to be unfinished business.”

Nadine nodded, having expected as much. “Before I make any decisions on the general’s transfer request, I want to speak with her.”

“Off the record?”

“At first,” the admiral said. “The fact that she went outside the chain of command is a problem, but I don’t want to put a black mark on her record if it can be avoided, and clearly the general agrees on that point or he wouldn’t have forwarded the request the way he did.”

MacKay nodded, understanding. “Should I inform her we’re coming, or would you prefer to make it a surprise inspection?”

Nadine smiled slightly. “Let’s do the surprise idea, shall we?”

*****

“Admiral on deck!”

Sorrilla didn’t, quite, drop her tools when the call sounded, but it was a close thing. She threw herself up, shoulders coming back automatically as she drew herself to attention, and was uncomfortably aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra and the room was kept quite cold to preserve the electronics within.

Out of the corner of her eye, she recognized the captain as she kicked off the doorframe and drifted into the center of the room, followed closely by Admiral Brookes, and took absolutely no comfort in the fact that it was two women approaching her. She’d long since assimilated the discomfort of being nude, or sometimes worse, in the presence of men. They, especially her squadmates, were known and comfortable quantities for her. Having the captain and the admiral, neither of whom she knew particularly well, seeing her in less-than-total professionalism was another matter.

The last thing she wanted was to be judged by them while in any state short of perfect.

That said, none of those thoughts or wishes affected reality, nor did they affect her posture or salute as she stood, ramrod straight, with her toes hooked into the base of the worktable while she waited for the two officers to right themselves in front of her.

“At ease,” Captain MacKay said as the admiral settled into place, eyes sternly glaring at Sorilla across the workbench.

Sorilla dropped the salute, clasping her hands behind her, and let her right foot slip from its literal toehold so she could send it questing out to find another brace that would let her assume the militarily correct posture. It took a few seconds, but finally she braced in with her feet about shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind her back, and shoulder still thrown back despite the effect it had on her breasts in the cool temperature of the armory work room.

Captain MacKay looked her over coolly for a long moment before turning back to the admiral.

“Admiral,” she said, tipping her head in Sorilla’s direction, “Sergeant Sorilla Aida, United States Special Forces.”

“So I see,” the statuesque woman in admiral’s whites said, pulling herself down to the level of the workbench as she aligned herself with Sorilla’s position.

Sorilla was mildly grateful that the admiral wasn’t playing games. She’d dealt with several officers who would intentionally align themselves with the walls or ceiling just to make their subordinates jump through hoops to be in the correct posture. It was a common trick used during training, normally by drill sergeants, mostly to acclimatize new troops to the idea that up was in whatever direction you needed it to be unless you were under acceleration.

Officers who pulled the same crap on seasoned personnel, however, really pissed her off.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Admiral Brookes seemed to take a moment to simply stare before speaking.

“Well, Sergeant,” she said finally, “I was wondering if you might have an explanation for a certain transfer request that was shot to my inbox this morning?”

Sorilla’s face twitched, mostly around the eyes, as she processed that.

The general made the request, finally!
she thought, almost gleefully until another thought struck her.
Oh crap. The bastard must have mentioned that I bypassed Fleet command. Shit.

The admiral’s eyes stayed locked on her face, but Sorilla could see her lips twitch upward in the corners and knew that she’d seen something she was looking for.

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Sorilla said, running on automatic. She wasn’t going to lie to an admiral unless she was pretty damned sure she could get away with it, and that wasn’t about to happen, apparently.

Admiral Brookes lifted an eyebrow, mildly surprised at the immediate admission. She’d half expected a standard OPCOM ‘deny, deny, deny’ tactic and was both glad, and mildly impressed, that the sergeant was smart enough to recognize that it would be futile.

“Would you care to explain why you felt that going outside your chain of command was necessary, Sergeant?” she asked, voice cold.

“Ma’am, it was the quickest way to achieve the objective.”

Admiral Brookes had a pained expression when she heard that.
Special Forces. It’s a good thing that they’re so very good at what they do, otherwise they’d be impossible to live with.

“Sergeant,” she said with a tone that made it clear that she was talking to someone infinitely lower on the evolutionary ladder than herself, “that line of reasoning is questionable even when under fire, and you know it. Cross that line again while you’re under my command and I’ll have you tossed out on your backside so fast you’ll make it to Earth on your own momentum, and you’ll be lucky to be teaching grade school gym classes when I’m through, am I quite clear?”

“Ma’am! Yes, ma’am!”

“You can shitcan the boot camp crap while you’re at it,” Brookes told her dryly, drawing a surprised look from the non-com. “As you just figured out, this conversation is off the record. General Kane didn’t mention you at all, but the very fact that he’s asking for OPCOM troops was enough to tell me that something was fishy. Thank’s for the confirmation, incidentally.”

Sorilla winced. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

“Now that the requisite ass chewing is out of the way,” Brookes said simply, “as you were, Sergeant. Let’s have a little chat.”

Sorilla hesitated briefly, then relaxed her posture. “Yes, ma’am. May I ask about what?”

“Let’s start with why you’re so intent on getting back to Hayden’s World, Sergeant.”

Sorilla paused, but finally nodded. “Right. There’s lots of reasons, Admiral. Unfinished business is one of them, so is the fact that I trained the pathfinders, ma’am. I want to see the mission through.”

“You did your part, Sergeant,” Nadine said. “The planet is under control now, there’s no reason to go back.”

Sorilla shook her head. “As long as the enemy controls ground on Hayden, they’re a threat, ma’am. We do not want to be caught between the high orbitals and a disciplined sabotage force on the ground.”

The Admiral recognized the argument and decided to simply avoid getting mired into the details of it. She wasn’t certain that she agreed. If a force took the high orbitals, then it didn’t really make any difference what was on the ground, in her mind. Once you lost high ground on a planetary scale, it was pretty much game over and you’d lost the match. Certainly there were things you could do, as both the sergeant herself and the aliens now on Hayden had, and were, proving but in a very real way the war was over at that point.

The flipside of the argument, and one not lost on her, was the fact that it could be a very large deal to people on-world and in the orbital tether if their defenders were distracted by fighting in orbit and let a ground strike through. A strategic blow? Probably not, in her mind, but certainly a very large problem for the people involved all the same.

She gazed evenly at the shorter, yet almost infinitely tougher and harder built woman sitting across the table, letting the silence draw out for a long moment.

“Fine,” Brookes said finally. “I’ll authorize a temporary detachment for you to Hayden command under Brigadier Kane. I won’t order anyone else to go with you, Sergeant.”

“Didn’t ask, Admiral.”

“Don’t try that John Wayne baloney with me, Aida,” Brookes scowled. “You don’t have the figure for it.” She pushed away from the workbench, drifting back to where Captain MacKay was waiting. “Remember what I said about the chain of command, Sergeant. You won’t get another warning.”