Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (13 page)

“Yes, ma’am,” Sorilla nodded.

Brookes kicked off and drifted to the door, the captain following behind. She caught the edge of the hatchway, looked back briefly, and spoke again. “Get your kit ready for your new assignment, Sergeant. You’ll be transferring to HACOM as soon as I speak with the general.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Admiral Brookes vanished out the door, leaving Captain MacKay to pause for a brief moment. “Sergeant?”

“Captain?” Sorilla answered, looking over.

“Pull what you need from stores,” MacKay said. “We’re due for refit and resupply when we get back to Sol space. I’ll clear the requisition.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sorilla almost stammered a little. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“You can thank me by not getting dead,” Captain MacKay replied. “You’ve done good work for Valkyrie, I’d like to see you do more.”

Sorilla nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll do my best.”

MacKay nodded curtly, then she, too, was gone from the armory room.

Sorilla stared at the hatch for a moment, then abruptly shifted back to her bench and went back to work, now moving with more intent. She had a mission now, though it was one she considered merely an extension of her early forays onto Hayden, and so it was one that she intended to finally finish once and for all.

*****

Nadine elected to remain on the Hood for a time, visiting with one of her captains and the crew of the ship that served as the Cheyenne’s cohort during mission maneuvers. She didn’t get a lot of chances to speak in person with her captains while the taskforce was in motion, though modern conferencing systems made that almost a moot point, she supposed. In the end, however, there was always something to be said about true face-to-face contact.

With the HMS Hood resting in orbit over Hayden, the microgravity made entertaining a bit of a trial, but Jane MacKay certainly gave it her best as she broke out food and drink for the admiral as they settled in to an nice little, unofficial working lunch.

“So, Admiral, if you don’t mind me asking,” MacKay said as Nadine took a sip of coffee from a squeeze bottle. “You didn’t come over here just for that, did you?”

Nadine smiled slightly. “I don’t mind at all, Captain. But actually, yes, I did. I wanted to speak with the sergeant in person, been meaning to for a while really.”

MacKay frowned pensively, a little confused by that. “I’m sorry, I just can’t figure out why. Aida is an impressive non-com, and she gets the job done, but why the personal interest?”

“This isn’t for general dissemination, Captain,” Nadine said, setting her coffee down in a lock-tight holder.

“Of course, Admiral.”

“The sergeant is on the shortlist for a Mustang slot,” Nadine said with a casual shrug. “Not sure how this particular stunt is going to affect that, but had she kept quiet and not stuck her neck out, she would probably have been directed to West Point when we got back.”

MacKay grimaced. “I suppose that’s why you gave her the assignment she wanted then? Punishment for going outside the chain of command?”

“Hardly,” Nadine said before taking a bite of a sandwich. She chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds, then swallowed. “No, if I’d wanted to punish that woman, I suspect that giving her over to West Point might have been a better move. Neither the general nor myself have made any official record of her actions. Some people will see through the official story to what really happened, but as far as the army, or the Solarian Navy, is concerned she was requested by a brigadier for her expertise and was temporarily detached to his command. No harm, no foul. Unless she screws up by the numbers, I suspect that this will clinch her new assignment.”

MacKay nodded. “I may be biased, as she’s been working out of my ship for so many months now, but I’m glad. She’s a good non-com, handles her squad better than the lieutenant when he’s not around, not that you heard that from me.”

Nadine smiled. “Of course not.”

Captain MacKay returned the smile and the two shifted their conversation to other topics, enjoying the quiet interlude and conversation between colleagues.

*****

Outer Hayden System

Gravity was one of the least well-known universal forces in human sciences. It was one of many examples of quantum mechanics where the math didn’t agree with what people experienced in real life, leading to often ever more complex theories that attempted to explain how and why the two were seemingly at odds.

As Newtonian theories had to be revised when Einstein postulated his theory of special relativity, and even his theories were quickly revised by quantum mechanics, so too did those theories get completely revised when humans had a chance to begin performing experimental tests in deep space away from the gravity well of the sun.

It wasn’t until decades after the Sol system had become a well-traveled backyard for the denizens of Earth that the first jump point was discovered, mostly accidentally. Albert Einstein had, early on, postulated that gravity propagated in wave patterns as part of his theory of special relativity. Evidence of that had been building since the mid and late twentieth century, but it wasn’t until a distant pulsar interacted with a gravity experiment beyond the orbit of Pluto that the full connotations of the event came together for researchers.

In orbit and in deep space, people often referred to the environment as ‘zero gravity,’ but that was a misnomer. It was technically better known as ‘microgravity,’ since everything in the universe was connected by the space-time fabric of which gravity was an integral part. Even in deep space, you were constantly under the acceleration of gravity toward…something. You just didn’t feel it because everything around you was also under the same acceleration force.

When that distant pulsar intersected with a point in space that was similar to a Lagrange point, however, space-time…for want of a better word, simply vanished. For an instant that correlated with the pulsar’s frequency of interaction, a point in space approximately two kilometers in diameter became disentangled from universal space-time. It was no longer part of the universe as humans understood it, and within that sphere, the laws of physics became indefinable for just a few seconds.

For humanity, those few seconds redefined everything.

Within a decade, the first jump-capable ships had made it to the closest stars, in several cases skipping well ahead of colony ships that had been sent out before jump points were known. A few seconds was all it took to trip off an entirely new era of exploration and discovery, all because of an unplanned experiment that had been interrupted by an uncharted pulsar.

Since those days, humans had learned to better detect the wavering sections of space that were known as jump points and even manipulate them to a certain degree. Since the points were often hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of kilometers in diameter, it could be tricky at best to determine when a point was becoming viable if the change was localized to a small section of it.

In order to counter this, the Solari Fleet had peppered the known points around Hayden with micro-sats. The small ion-engine drones swarmed the jump points, waiting and watching for any change in local space-time with the hope of catching an early warning if anything came through. As they waited and watched, the drones’ moment was upon them; however, a warp in space-time caused their accelerometers to go haywire as local gravity went into flux.

The drones instantly signaled back, transmitting their findings even as the first smoothly curved hulls cut back into the local space-time and shifted fully into Hayden’s space.

It would take just over ten
hours
before those signals reached a living human receiver.

*****

Parithalian Alliance Ship
Noble Venture

The tension in the air was palpable. Everyone was fully aware that there was no longer a question of
if
they were going to encounter the alien forces, but now it was a matter of
when
. For Ship’s Master Reethan Parath, his eyes were only interested in the detection apparatus and the connected displays. He wanted nothing more than to know what he was facing, even though it was unlikely that they’d pick much up with the initial sweeps.

The finest resolution devices in the fleet were all limited by light speed, so if the aliens were deep in the system, it would be hours before they gathered enough signal data to properly compile a useful image. If they were hiding close to the system primary, as the Ros’El were wont to do, getting useful image data may even be impossible.

“Deploy defensive systems, prepare the flotilla to penetrate the system,” he ordered from where he was standing, overlooking the command stations.

“Yes, Ship’s Master. Deploying short-range weapons, launching automatons now.”

The ship shivered slightly as the weaponized automatons were launched and maneuvered with dispatch into a tactical net around the ship and its companions. Other ships quickly did the same, filling the space around them with the small but armed robots.

“Proximity detection!”

“Identify!” Reethan ordered instantly, turning toward the automaton control stations.

“They look like automatons, Master. Small ones, low powered, but they’re transmitting signals in-system.”

Reethan nodded. “Then they know we’re here.”

“They will in time, Ship’s Master,” the young officer corrected. “Light speed signals.”

“Oh? Interesting. Very well, silence them,” Reethan ordered. “Set a course for the disputed world.”

“Yes, Ship’s Master.”

“Course already prepared, Ship’s Master.”

The small flotilla of starships came about smoothly, flickers of light erupting around the only sign of dozens of weapon discharges, and began to accelerate down the long deep hill that was the gravity well of the system.

****

HMS Hood

Sorilla tossed the large duffle into the shuttle pod, swinging in after it and strapping it into place so it would float around while she checked the rest of her kit. As she pulled herself back out of the transport vehicle, she spotted Korman drifting outside the pod, arms looped through a set of braces.

“Going somewhere, Sarge?” the corporal asked, his tone mild to the point of near ludicrousness.

“Just over to the station.”

“That’s not what the orders said.”

Sorilla looked to the other side, nodding to where Jardiens was drifting with his arms crossed over his chest.

“You wouldn’t be ditching us, would you, Sarge?” Mack asked from above her position, making her crane her neck to look up at him and Jardiens.

“Just finishing up some old business, guys.” Sorilla sighed, mentally damning Jardiens as she spoke.

He’s the only fool out of this bunch good enough to slip a tripline into the system set to warn him about deployment orders.

“And you’re not inviting us along? That hurts, Sarge.” Mack smiled a particularly unhappy looking smile.

“I didn’t invite you because it’s my old business, not yours.” She scowled at them. “You lot have leave coming, and I damned well expect you to make the best of it. There’s no telling how long this war is going to last, or how hot a hell it’s going to become before it’s over, so go home, take some time off, get it stuck in if you still can, and don’t worry about me. I can handle my own affairs.”

“That’s not how things work, Sarge,” Mack growled.

“Things work the way I damned well say they work,” she countered, glaring up at him. “And if you think otherwise, I can always come up there and break your legs to prove it to you.”

The well-over-six-foot tall former SAS trooper held up his hands in surrender, shaking his head. Even if she wasn’t serious, the last thing he wanted to do was cross the old lady while he was floating around in microgravity. She could probably do exactly what she was threatening, and unless he managed to get a lot better leverage than he thought he was likely to find, there wouldn’t be too damned much he could do about it.

“Hayden is a spotter’s job anyway,” she went on once she was satisfied that he wasn’t going to take her up on the offer. “I know the terrain better than any of you, and I’ll have my pathfinders as backup, not to mention pretty much unrestricted access to the tether station’s Kilo Kilo launchers. This is my job, boys. Go home, have fun. I’ll see you on the way back out.”

The team grumbled as she turned away from them to direct the crate holding her armor, weapons, and kit to the pod. She’d requisitioned a bit more than her normal kit, and it showed as a second crate appeared in the tow of a loading bot. The team noted it, but other than some curious glances said nothing. Korman finally untangled himself from the wall and kicked over to the shuttle pod’s hatch.

“Sarge, are you sure about this?” he asked pointedly. “Couple hours, we can be ready to move.”

“Don’t even daydream about it, Corporal,” she told him evenly. “This one’s mine.”

The Israeli commando frowned but had little more to say. “This isn’t a single-player game, Sarge, and you don’t get points for playing cowboy, as you Americans say.”

“I’m not going to Rambo this, Corporal, relax,” she said, exasperated, both by the continued pressure and by the Israeli’s choice of analogies. Luckily, she knew how to speak the lingo as clearly as he did. “Not playing story mode here, just changing guilds.”

Korman half smiled, then chuckled before he pushed back and nodded. “Clear, Sarge. We’ll see you back here on the way out, yeah then?”

“You’re damn right you will,” she said. “Now go on, get! All of you. I’ve got a pod to catch.”

They pushed away from the shuttle pod, nodding to her as they drifted away. Sorilla returned the gestures as she floated back into the pod. She waited for them to be well clear before hitting the hatch seal and pulling herself back to her acceleration bolster to strap in.

Once she was secured, the lights changed in the pod to let her know that everything was clear and she’d launch as soon as the bay was secured.

Once more,
she thought, eyes closed as she pictured the jungles below at the back of her mind.
Let’s see how well you’ve learned past lessons, then, shall we?