Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (14 page)

The warning alarms chimed a few seconds in advance, and then Sorilla felt herself being pushed against the restraints as the pod was ejected from the Hood. Rockets flared a moment later, sending the drone pod on its way to the tether station and her to the world below.

Ready or not…here I come.

*****

Hayden Jungle

Kris stared blankly at the instrument panel of the assault lander for a long moment, considering what he’d just learned.

A Parithalian flotilla. Well, the Alliance is taking things a bit more seriously now, at least.

The signal had outpaced the arrival of the inbound flotilla by over twenty split cycles, giving him a fair amount of time to prepare. With the Parries up top keeping the alien fleet busy, Kris figured that would be their best opportunity to take the fight right back to the enemy’s stronghold.

They’d been fading the enemy perimeter off and on for the past couple days already, mapping out a plan to cause the most chaos they could with a single strike. It was their best hope of getting back off-world once the enemy fleet left orbit again, since the assault lander didn’t have much in the way of standoff weapons to fight any serious kind of fleet-scale battle.

With the Ros’El on board, Kris was hopeful that they’d have at least even odds of shifting out of the system. No one knew gravetic sciences better than the Ros’El, and he’d heard of them shifting smaller ships than the lander.

With a flotilla inbound, however, that plan was pushed back in priority. They’d distract the enemy as best they could, timed to coincide with the arrival of the flotilla. If things worked out, retaking the planet would be a possibility, and that took priority over escaping the system.

Kris reached out and flipped open a secure channel to his Sentinels.

“All Sentinels, prepare to move on the primary target in twenty split cycles, I want all personnel ready to move in two. Prime out.”

*****

Parithalian Alliance Vessel
Noble Venture

“No further resistance on approach, Master.”

“Nothing on our scans?” Reethan asked curiously.

“No, unless they have better shadow technology than we can illuminate, the way is clear.”

The ship’s master scowled. “Don’t assume they don’t. We still aren’t certain how they snuck up on the Ros’El task group in this very system.”

“Yes, Ship’s Master.”

In all truth, one thing Reethan wasn’t worried about was running into the enemy on approach. Certainly, it was possible to hide in the vast empty reaches of space-time, but there was a practical limit on how well one could predict an approach path across the same reaches. In order to even begin plotting his least-time path between the shift zones and the planet ahead, an enemy would need almost intimate knowledge of his entire fleet.

Without knowing acceleration potential, cruise velocities, and a host of other factors, there was just no way to determine information of that sort. And that assumed that he used a least-time approach, which he did not.

No, they wouldn’t be seeing the enemy this far out.

What did bother him was the fact that there
were
no pickets. Few species, in his experience, really understood the nature of space combat. Even most Alliance species preferred to maintain a reasonably dense system picket, just as a security blanket of sorts. It was mostly pointless, except occasionally for rescue purposes, but they felt better with it in place and so didn’t care that it was a waste of resources.

What Reethan dearly would like to know was whether he was up against a species that understood space the way Parithalians did, or were they simply so low on resources that they couldn’t spare any ships for a security blanket?

Knowing the answer to that question could very well determine the outcome of the coming battle, to say nothing of this nasty little war they’d found themselves locked in. Unfortunately, the universe had no answers for him today.

Not yet anyway.

*****

Brigadier Kane’s Office,

Liberation Tether Counterweight
,
Hayden Orbit

“At ease,” Kane said to the woman standing in front of him.

The last time she’d been in that spot, he’d been irritated with her for jumping the chain of command. This time he was irritated with her for convincing him to do precisely what she wanted him to do in the first place.

There ought to be a law that women can’t be Special Forces,
he though, grumbling to himself.
They’re bloody well dangerous enough as it is.

In the end, though, she had been right. Well, mostly right. He still wasn’t convinced that there was a pressing need to clear out the jungles around the tether’s anchor, but the flipside of it was that he was far from convinced that there
wasn’t
a pressing need to do so. And since there was no downside to having the Hayden jungles clear of enemy soldiers, he was willing to err on the side of the argument that removed the potential of a threat.

That, of course, assumed that the sergeant in front of him could do what she intended. She was probably one of the few people in the service who could, by virtue of her training, experience, and field time on planet. He had some good scouts in his battalion, some of the best, but even he knew that his best didn’t match up to the Hayden pathfinders that the sergeant had trained.

Unfortunately, he had no use for irregular forces like those men and women; they only got in the way of his soldiers. Having Sergeant Aida back on Hayden served another purpose in that it would let him get those few pathfinders that kept pushing for a more active role in the war out of his hair.

“Since the largest part of this assignment was your own idea, Sergeant, do you have any questions?” he asked after the silence between them had stretched out long enough.

“I just need to know who I can tap as part of my team, General, sir.”

Kane snorted, but tossed a digital folder across to her. The sergeant caught it easily, barely breaking her posture as she flipped the electronic paper folder open. It was biometrically secured, but a pass of her thumb cleared that. Low level security, didn’t even require a retinal print. The names formed on the folder, along with links to their files. She didn’t need the links, she knew every name on the list.

“You’ll have priority access to the Kilo Kilo launchers,” Kane went on, “as well as our complement of combat drones, unless something major changes.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sorilla nodded, eyes flicking across the dossier as she called up the overhead maps of the area around the old colony site.

The maps on file were real-time, direct god’s eye view of the continent. She zoomed in and examined the area around the site with interest, though for all their brilliant clarity, the imagery was basically worthless. Like the aliens learned when they invaded Hayden originally, there was nothing better than a jungle to hide just about anything.

The Cheyenne could be sitting down in that mess and she’d never see it from up here.

She looked up. “Is there any more information I need, General, sir?”

He almost glared for a minute but finally shook his head. “Yes, I’ve assigned an officer to oversee your operations.”

He took some satisfaction in seeing her twitch at that, even knowing that she had to have expected it.

“He’ll meet you planet-side. Your ride to the surface leaves in three hours. Dismissed.”

Sorilla saluted, then pivoted on her heel and marched out of the office without a glance backward. Brigadier Kane watched her go and deliberately took several deep breaths. For some reason, he always got his backup in the presence of SOCOM and OPCOM soldiers, they just rode on his nerves no matter how polite they seemed.

He’d be so much happier if they weren’t needed, but of all the things he personally fancied himself, a fool wasn’t one. The kind of terrain below was a nightmare for regular forces, practically tailor-made for the sort of fighting that OPCOM people were best at. If he sent his men into the jungles on Hayden, even with every bit of hardware available to him, they’d likely take out the enemy, but Kane wouldn’t want to see the casualty lists when it was done.

Whether the sergeant and her little band of merry men would be able to make any real changes in the situation on the surface was almost superfluous to him in the end. It was doing something at least and would look good on reports back to the World. Sitting barricaded inside the beams of their perimeter was still, in his considered opinion, the best option currently available, but it wouldn’t look good if it got trotted out in public hearings.

She wanted a job he wasn’t stupid enough to send his men to do, so he was all too happy to grant her wish.

That said, he hoped she got it done. That would look even better in the reports back home.

*****

Sorilla checked the register via her implants as soon as she left the office, noting that Jerry was listed as being on the surface already, so that was one name down. She quickly sent out messages to Dean, Tara, and a half dozen others listed as being on the station, notifying them of her return.

She had a lot to do, but, unfortunately, most of it couldn’t be done until she was Hayden-side. What she could do was drop in on the officers and techs who were manning the fire control rooms, communications rooms, and supply depots and make sure that they had their copy of the orders and had a face to go along with the name on the files.

It wasn’t strictly necessary; lord knew she had placed her life in the hands of faceless entities before. That was the nature of the military. Everyone had to do it sometimes, and because of that you grew to treat people you’d never met as brothers and sisters. Still, she’d learned that when there was a face attached, even the most dedicated military officer would react just that hair quicker to provide support.

Once she was on Hayden, their reaction times might well be the only thing that separated victory from death.

*****

USS Cheyenne

Admiral Nadine Brookes’s mind drifted wistfully to thoughts of home, or even the station orbiting just a few hundred meters away from her position, as she carefully sponged soap and water across her skin. Showers, to say nothing of baths, were luxuries on board a ship. Impossibilities if they weren’t under acceleration, but even when moving, there was a distinct rush to get clean and get back in your flight suit just in case.

Floating in orbit of a planet, the best you could do was a sponge bath, and even with that you had to be extremely careful. Water floating around the ship was a nuisance, soapy water was a downright pain.

She was almost done of this ritual when the comm from the next room chimed, drawing an irritated groan from her.

Nadine packed the sponge away in a sealable plastic bag, scrubbed her wet skin down roughly with a towel, and yanked the flight suit back on before pulling herself out into the main rooms and to her computer and comm.

“Admiral Brookes here.”

“Admiral.” Captain Roberts’s voice was tense. “We have contacts, inbound.”

“I’ll be on the admiralty deck in five minutes,” she said.

“Take your time, Admiral,” he countered. “They’re at least three hours out.”

“Understood. Keep gathering intelligence, then. I’ll expect a full report in thirty minutes.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

Nadine hissed after the comm was shut down. She was intimately familiar with the supply schedule, as well as all patrols scheduled in the region, and there was nothing from Earth on the docket. It might be something unannounced, but the tension in Roberts’s voice told her that he didn’t believe that any more than she did.

They finally came back for another round.

She almost headed straight for the admiral’s flag deck, but stopped herself. There was nothing she could do there just yet, and something very important she could do in her rooms. Reluctantly, Nadine went back to the small room that served as a bathroom, unpacked the sponge, and went about completing her bath.

*****

She arrived on the flag deck just over twenty minutes later, wearing a fresh new flight suit and feeling like maybe she didn’t stink quite as badly as she had before.

“Report,” she ordered, dropping into her acceleration bolster and pulling displays in around her.

“No communications from inbound contacts, ma’am. They did
not
use a least-time course to Hayden.”

That raised an eyebrow as Nadine looked over the information. Her ensign was correct, of course. The contacts were moving toward Hayden on a pretty roundabout path, but they were booting it. The speed they’d gathered made it pretty clear that they weren’t human ships, though she was surprised that their velocity was so low if they were alien.

“What do we have from the perimeter picket drones?” Nadine asked as she digested that bit of information.

“Nothing much, Admiral. They reported gravitational anomalies from the jump point, but the information was extremely light on the details. Just enough that the captain ordered us to start looking for anything odd.”

“I see.” She pulled up the direct view of the contacts, as seen through their long-range detection systems, and saw quickly how the ships had been spotted.

The alien ships ran hot, really hot, and with the sun on the other side of the Cheyenne and Task Force Valkyrie’s systems, they stood out like a flare in the darkness. She was surprised, in fact, by just how hot they were running. If she hadn’t known better from the Doppler shift and the fact that the aliens didn’t use VASIMR drives, she would have believed them to be arse to Hayden, burning everything they had to decelerate.

They’d registered the heat of the alien ships in the past, but this was interestingly one of the few times she had the time, and the inclination, to ponder it.

It does explain their fondness for hiding in the glare of the system’s star, however. It’s one of the only things that could hide that thermal signature.

Cheyenne and Longbow class ships both ran hot as well, but most of the extreme heat was radiated out the rear thrust vents. There was a low level heat loss across the whole ship, but the ceramic plates were excellent insulators, and liquid coolant systems transported the heat into the center of the ships, where the VASIMR drive was. There, excess heat was either radiated away or reclaimed in power generation. The ships only radiated a few degrees above the background temperature of the galaxy, unlike their alien counterparts, which looked like miniature stars.