Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (18 page)

Since that was precisely the end she was hoping to avoid to begin with, Sorilla grudgingly supposed that faster wasn’t exactly better in this case. It didn’t stop her from wishing for an assault lander, though.

*****

Hayden Jungles

The leader of the second Sentinel team considered his orders, signaling a stop. Targeting an object that far away wasn’t so difficult, but the singularity point created by the projector would be less than perfect at that range. The portable projectors the Sentinels were issued were simply designed for relatively close-range combat, not so close as the handheld models used in close combat but certainly not on par with ship-mounted devices.

He locked onto the descending target, zooming in as tightly as he could with his scopes, and clicked softly in both surprise and, yes, even a little shock.

There actually is someone standing on the top of that thing. Do these people do this as standard procedure? Wouldn’t automated weapons be more effective?

He racked his mind, trying to remember if anyone had reported people standing on those vehicles in the past, but couldn’t recall.
Whatever. Hardly matters.

“Set up here,” he ordered, examining their trail for a moment while his Second and Third set up the projector.

They’d lost the enemy counterforce some ways back, but he didn’t want to be snuck up on just because he was careless.

“Take your time,” he said when he was certain they weren’t being tailed. “Do it right, no mistakes.”

The two grunted more than spoke, but that was fine. He knew that they heard him and were taking it seriously. He turned his focus on the descending vehicle, using his scope to find the range and determine its descent rate.

“Fire when ready,” he ordered, having sent the information to his men.

“Targeting…”

“Firing.”

*****

Tether Car Roof, Descending to ANGELS 110 over Hayden

The next attack took her by surprise.

It was silent, for one, but far more importantly, it struck
above
the tether car. Sorilla dropped her rifle, leaving it to clatter across the metal roof of the tether car, and clawed at air as she was pulled upwards by a gravity suck, only to be dropped a second later to smash face first into the rooftop.

Ow.

Okay, that thought was purely out of reflex. Her armor kept her from breaking anything, but being dropped on your face sucks no matter how you figure it. Worse, she had to scramble hard to keep from slipping off and going for the high dive to end all high dives.

Her internal accelerometer registered that strike, however, and, far more importantly, it also registered the brief directional vector that preceded it.

Growling, Sorilla gripped her weapon again as she struggled to her feet and staggered over to the edge of the car again. This shot had come from another sector, far enough that she knew for certain that it wasn’t the same shooter. She shouldered the stock of her rifle, activating the HARD electronics again as she glared down over the precipice to the lush jungle below.

She and her pathfinders were sitting ducks, no doubt about that, but she had an answer to that problem. She had been hesitant to use it initially, particularly since it seemed that her rifle could settle the issue, but that was then.

And this is now.
Sorilla gritted her teeth before opening a comm channel. “Kilo Kilo Charlie, Hawkeye.”

“Go for Kilo Kilo Charlie, Hawkeye.”

“Have a tasking. Coordinates transmitted, please expedite.”

“Roger. Expediting,” the voice on the other end replied. “Hawkeye, that’s close to the beams.”

“Roger,” she answered. “Unknown gravity valve in area.”

“Understood. Area is clear of friendlies. Tasking expedited.”

A roaring sound tore through the thin atmosphere around her, causing Sorilla to look up in time to see a trail of fire tear vertically down from the skies above and slam into the jungle before. Unlike the small rounds from her rifle, the kinetic kill launchers in the station above fired one-hundred-kilogram projectiles fast enough to leave hundred-meter-wide craters in the ground below.

The mushroom cloud below looked like rolling fire from where she was watching, but Sorilla just grinned nastily under her helm.

We
hold high ground this time, how do you like them apples?

*****

Hayden Jungles

The shockwave was receding and the dust cloud rolling over his position when Kris lifted himself off the ground, blinking dirt and debris from his eyes as he stared in shock at the ruined scene ahead of him.

He and his Second had been moving to join Team Two’s position when the blast lifted them from their feet and threw them back into the jungle’s growth like children’s toys in a storm. He recognized the effect almost before he was able to think about it, though he was still somewhat in shock at seeing a mass mover impact at such a close range.

The Alliance didn’t use such weapons anymore, mostly because the singularity technology was more powerful by far and didn’t require physical ammunition, but there was no questioning the efficacy of a mass mover in practice. This one hadn’t even been particularly large or high velocity, if he were to judge, but for all that it had certainly been enough to annihilate Team Two before they managed to get off more than a couple shots on the distant and descending vehicle.

This is something I could have done without.

“What do we do, Prime?”

“Warn Team Three,” he snarled, opening a comm to the last remaining team that had taken part in the strike mission. “Team Three, abort and withdraw!” he called, already running. “The enemy has mass movers with precision targeting.”

There was a long moment before a response was forthcoming, enough to start Kris worrying, but finally he got the signal he was hoping for.

“Third team, move back to alternative strike position and prepare for remote firing,” Kris ordered before swapping channels. “All units, move in to Brakka positions. I want that thread
cut!
”

*****

Tether Car, Descending to ANGELS 90 over Hayden

The dust below them was still settling, but for the last twenty thousand feet things had been quiet. Quiet enough that Sorilla was just starting to feel the first edges of paranoia entering into the brief bliss of victory rush. She swayed with the slight motion of the descending car, the winds now starting to become such that they were noticeable, and kept her rifle’s HARD gear sweeping the jungles below.

As much as she wanted to believe it, Sorilla doubted that she’d nailed the last of them by calling in rods from God. They had already proven to be tougher and smarter than that, so she wasn’t writing their epitaph just yet.

Come on, I know you haven’t played your last card yet. Where are you?

There was no way she’d even entertain the
idea
of relaxing, not until they kissed dirt on Hayden, and that was ninety thousand feet straight down.

“Hawkeye, KilCom.”

“Go for Hawkeye, KilCom.” Sorilla acknowledged the chirp from Kilo Command, the section of the station in charge of the planet’s kinetic weapons launchers.

“We’ve analyzed the target zone, before and after strike. Confirmed enemy presence just before impact. Good strike.”

No shit, Sherlock.
Sorilla couldn’t help but shake her head.
I don’t call down the fire on empty TZs.

“Roger, KilCom,” she said aloud. “Any sign of other bandits?”

“Negative, Hawkeye.”

“Understood. ETA for enemy starships?” she asked, almost not wanting to hear the answer. Having a ship-mounted gravity valve targeting the tether or, worse, the counterweight before they hit the ground would be a major suck.

“Seventy-two minutes.”

Sorilla ran the numbers quickly but was relieved to realize that the car would be on the ground just before the enemy was in range…either safely, or in pieces, depending on how much of a say the enemy ground forces had in the descent.

Either way, she didn’t have to worry about being blown to her component atoms by a shipboard weapon.

Just the ground-based systems. Joy, my life is so easy.

“Roger, thanks KilCom.”

“No problem, Hawkeye. Just a heads up, though, you’re about to lose some of our satellite-based launchers. We’re re-tasking to target inbound ships. From here on out, you have priority call on the station’s fixed launchers only.”

“Roger that,” Sorilla responded, having expected that. It wasn’t really a significant loss of firepower, if she were right about the nature of the enemy forces on the surface.

The station launchers were fixed, but their firing arc was more than enough to cover her expected AO. They were limited to how close they could fire to the tether, however, which meant that she was about to lose the ability to call down close support fire around the beams.

With a little luck, they’ll be too concerned about that last strike to push in close until we’re on the ground anyway.

*****

Hayden Jungles

Coordinating through this infinitely blasted jungle is a
pain
!

Kris couldn’t do more than grit his teeth as he worked, however, as the job was a necessity. The enemy had shown both the capacity and the capability to use mass movers in frighteningly close proximity to their own lines of control, which meant that whatever he and his people did would have to be done carefully, cleverly, and above all…quickly.

One of the biggest problems he’d encountered was that the local plant life was rich in several elements that tended to disrupt the standard comms he had available. It made long-distance coordination tricky, particularly since many of those in his ‘command’ were not Sentinels.

That said, they managed adequately, perhaps even admirably, in his opinion.

We don’t have enough of the man portable projectors heavy enough to constitute a serious threat to a structure of this size.
He hated to admit it, but the materials involved in the construction of the thread were even tougher than he’d previously calculated.
I
s
hould have expected that Engineers of this quality would have padded their needs in the material design.

There was no way they had enough power with one of the heavy man portable units to snap the thread, which was the second reason he wanted to take out the descending car. The first reason, of course, was because he wanted to return a little pain to the enemy Sentinel forces, and he was convinced that was what he was looking at.

“Prime! We’re ready to fire, but they will locate as quickly once we do.”

Kris looked over to the approaching Sentinel, but nodded. “Granted. One pulse only, per unit. Stagger the first three, save the remaining three for my orders.”

“Yes, Prime!”

Kris returned his calculations, wishing that he had more accurate weapons for the task at hand. Unfortunately, at best, the singularity pulse weapons were a blunt instrument, and at the ranges they were currently working at, it was a difficult task indeed.

He considered letting the vehicle descend the thread more, bringing it into closer range, but the fact that the enemy was using mass movers made that a chancy proposition indeed. All it would take was one mistake, perhaps not even that, and their life patterns would be sitting in a flaming crater wondering what happened to their bodies.

****

Tether Car, Descending to ANGELS 70 over Hayden

The atmosphere was starting to thicken up as they approached seventy thousand feet over the colony site, making things harder for Sorilla as she moved around the roof of the tether car and tried to scout out the areas below. Finally, between the now buffeting wind and the possibility of another gravity assault throwing her off the car, she pulled the rescue line from her belt and awkwardly looped it around the center pylon, clipping it off on itself so she could still move without being tossed clear.

Things had again calmed down after the last attack, but she wasn’t counting on that to hold. The enemy was skilled, patient, and motivated if they had any idea about the incoming fleet…and, given the timing of the attack, she had no doubt that they did.

That said, there were no signs of them on her HARD gear, and as the car continued to descend into more and more optimal ranges for engagement, that made her nervous. She was fairly confident that they hadn’t seen the tail of this assault just yet; she wasn’t that lucky.

The station above her was scanning the surrounding area with high intensity and higher resolution imagery, throwing the raw data through pattern recognition software as quickly as the onboard computers could process it, but even with the computers throwing out millions of images that showed nothing, she could see that the possible detection matches were swamping the human operators above her.

Seconds ticked by, becoming minutes as the car descended past ANGELS Seventy and made its way to ANGELS Sixty. They were almost down to the point at which commercial flights would travel, were they on Earth, only another twenty or thirty thousand feet.

Just another hour or so and we’ll be on the ground,
she thought grimly.
Assuming we survive that long.

Tether cars couldn’t drop quite as quickly as a free flying craft, unfortunately, both to preserve the tether and the passengers within. Normally that was a minor nuisance at best, but to her knowledge, there had never been a military battle surrounding a tether in history until Hayden.

The fat, slow-moving target presented by the car was redefining the phrase ‘sitting duck’ in her mind at this point, and Sorilla wished she’d had the forethought to request a shuttle for a combat drop. They probably would have turned her down, but at least she wouldn’t be kicking her own backside just then for not having thought of it.

She barely had time to register the warning her accelerometers gave before the maelstrom struck.