Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (24 page)

The enemy was through playing the game by Valkyrie’s rules.

“All thrusters, all rudders, full port!” Roberts ordered, having no time to worry about the other ships in the squadron.

The Cheyenne had avoided the attack, true, but they were now showing their flank to the enemy, and that wasn’t a situation calculated to set him at ease.

Having been thrown to one side as the ship twisted out of the way, the crew was now thrown hard in the opposite direction as she turned back. The sideways acceleration was lighter than the crushing force of the main drives, but their acceleration suits weren’t as well-suited to alleviating pressures from that direction either.

Fighting off spots dancing in their vision and bruises forming on both sides, the crew of the USS Cheyenne found themselves staring down the teeth of the remaining enemy ships coming right down their throat.

“Oh shit.”

*****

Tether Counterweight Station Liberation

“Nukes are hot, General.”

“Thank you, stand by for launch,” Kane ordered, stepping away from his station to look over the shoulder of his sensor tech. “How is the firing solution?”

“We’re solid, sir,” the Navy petty officer said. “At this range, we have near enough to a real time as to make no difference.”

“Excellent. Wind the launchers up,” Kane said. “Let’s see how they like a few giga-tons down their throats.”

“Yes, sir.”

With the appearance of Task Force Valkyrie, the weight had been lifted from Liberation’s defensive network. The enemy just couldn’t focus the attention on both targets at once, and it was clear that they considered the mobile enemy to be the greater threat.

Time to disabuse them of that notion,
Kane thought, almost sneering at the screen. “Fire on my command…”

“Enemy fleet is maneuvering!”

Kane snapped his head up, eyes to the plot as he looked for the new motion.

The enemy fleet had just suddenly, and with effectively no warning, thrown themselves at almost right angles to their previous course. Granted, even at full acceleration for the alien drives on those ships, a right angle turn was impossible, but they were making a damned fine effort of it. What was even better was the fact that—Kane couldn’t believe his luck—they were basically giving him an ideal shot right up their backsides as they struggled to change course.

“Fi-!” Kane began to say, only to be cut off.

“General! Check the plot!”

He swirled, glaring at the lieutenant commander who’d interrupted him, but saw the man pointing to the main plot and bit down on his words until he at least checked for himself. It took a second for him to see what his officer had spotted, but when he saw it he swore up a storm.

The enemy’s new track was bringing them right into close contact with Valkyrie. Given the launch and travel time of his nukes, he couldn’t risk the shot. By the time they arrived on target, the two fleets would be interpenetrated and he’d just as likely take out Valkyrie as the enemy.

He glared at the plot for a long, interminable-feeling moment, then finally shook his head in disgust.

“Stand down the nukes.”

*****

In the depths and sheer expanse of space, even ‘sharp’ maneuvers were, in reality, astoundingly large curves. For the Parithalian fleet to change their course as abruptly as they did required levels of acceleration that would have crushed humans in their padded acceleration seats, turning the entire crew to little more than a smear of red ichor on the rear-side bulkheads.

Nevertheless, humans had become somewhat inured to seeing their enemy violate the laws of physics over the last few years of warfare. As fast as they were, as
impossibly
fast as they were, the crews of Task Force Cheyenne had already taken the possibility to account, and they weren’t aiming to go quietly into the night.

*****

USS Cheyenne

“Bring us about! Put the nose into the charge!” Roberts ordered, trying not to grunt and gasp as he did, even if everyone else was doing it.

The Cheyenne was literally using every system in her maneuvering suite to twist, turn, kick, and buck through space as the enemy continued to fire in their direction. Bow thrusters shoved the ships to one side, and then the other, as bolts of alien energy weapon fire tore past her. The immense gyroscopes buried around the hull of the ship supplemented the vectored thrust systems in addition to banking her out of the path of incoming blasts, and all of it was wreaking all holy hell with the crew’s health and wellbeing.

Bruises were the least of the issues, as some people blacked out from lack of blood to the brain, others had certainly experienced ‘red-out’ as the exact opposite happened and blood rushed to their heads with such force that men and women were bleeding from the eyes, nose, and ears as they struggled to maintain their stations.

The issue was slightly less for Captain Roberts and other essential stations that had been equipped with bulky, but incredibly useful, full motion acceleration couches. Since the ship’s computers always knew what direction the thrusters were going to fire next, those same computers told his chair what direction to turn so he could take the least dangerous amount of G-force.

Which mean that so far he only had some bruises and maybe a couple cracked ribs, judging from the pain he experienced with every gasping breath.

This better be our last fight for a few weeks,
he thought as he glared into the display that showed him the incoming enemy plots. ‘
Cause I’m going to be no good to anyone when the adrenaline wears off.

“Forward guns! Fire as she bears!” he called, keying in a command as he spoke.

The Command Operating System (COS) was something even a playschool child could operate, mostly because it had to be. Big pictures for the most part, bright and cheerfully colored, practically obscene when one considered what those pretty pictures set in motion. When you were being slammed around at better than ten-G’s, however, you didn’t have time to be looking in confusion at a row of buttons that were all the same color while your entire world tunneled around you.

One touch sent orders through the whole ship, shifting defense priorities and sending the rail guns from offensive to point defense. The launchers went into rapid fire as soon as the first firing solution was spit out of the computer, firing smaller but faster moving rounds into the oncoming onslaught of fire.

With the Hood only instants behind them in changing to point defense, the space ahead of them was filled with steel and alien weapons’ fire, both of which were clawing for supremacy. Roberts could only hope that the steel would, if not win, at least drive the game to a draw.

With point defense initiated, Roberts tapped another cheery picture on the display by his fingers, and somewhere deep in the Cheyenne, automated systems rewired their onboard nuclear arsenal for penetration detonation.

This little war is about to go supernova right in our faces.

*****

Parithalian Alliance Ship
Noble Venture

Essence of your lives for that of ours,
Reethan thought grimly as he watched three alien ships bleed atmosphere, debris, and lives into the blackness.

The flotilla was in full assault mode now, firing furiously into the enemy as the enemy seemed to be caught by surprise. It didn’t last long, however, as explosions of energy erupted between the two groups to show that the enemy defenses were still in fine working order.

The surprise charge had bought them time, but only instants at best, and as close as they were going to pass, Reethan had no doubt that his ships and their crews were going to be badly mauled in the passing. In exchange, however, he would ensure that each drop of Parithalian essence would be paid for in full.

“Rear weapons to point defense only,” he said calmly. “Cover us from the station and their satellites. All forward weapons, assault priority. Annihilate them.”

“Yes, Master of Ships.”

*****

The two groups of ships interpenetrated, moving at near relativistic speeds, and continued to tear into one another as they passed.

First the Devonshire lost her forward ceramic plates, opening the ships to direct damage on her nickel-iron hull. The alien weapons punched through that meters-thick section of hull and tore into the interior of the ship without concern for what, or who, was in its path. The ‘Shire lost positive control, bleeding atmosphere and men as she twisted in space, the damage having somehow destroyed communication between the bridge and the maneuvering control rooms.

The human fleet struck back with nuclear fire, so close to the same time as to require computers to divine which came first. A bunker buster punched through the alien armor of an onrushing ship, blowing through four decks before the penetrative fuse decided enough was enough and fired the implosive charge.

The Parithalian ships weren’t as tough as their Ros’El counterparts, or even as thickly built as the human Longbow and Cheyenne class. An internal nuclear blast tore the
Preserver
to its component parts and sprayed them through the flotilla like shrapnel.

Still, while more lightly armored than the Ros, and certainly less heavily built than the human ships, the Parithalian armor was dozens of times stronger, weight for weight, than anything either of the other species was able to field. Their ships shrugged off the hits and kept firing as they blew through the enemy formation.

*****

HMS Hood

The ship rocked, a violent and unnerving sensation while under acceleration. For those ‘below decks,’ with little or no information about what was happening, many could only gasp for breath and pray for the fighting to be over while the ship was still mostly in one piece. Loud noises weren’t supposed to be heard on a ship as heavily built as a Longbow class, so when something hit her hard enough for people to hear buried all the way inside, those same people jumped.

Or at least tried.

“Fuck!” Jardiens swore through his gasps and grunts. “What the fuck was that?”

“Will you just
please
shut up?”

Mack was certainly no happier with the sounds and jostling than his unit comrade, but the constant, vocal swearing was getting on his last nerve. He had enough to worry about without Jardiens pointing out every damn clank and bang for him.

“I’m just saying, ships shouldn’t make noises like that!”

“We
know
!”

“Should have gone with the sarge,” Korman said grimly from where he was strapped in. “At least on Hayden we’d be more than
luggage
.”

That was one point they were all in agreement on, the sarge was the lucky one this time around. They didn’t know what she was up to, but it had to be better than being strapped down to the craziest thrill ride in history and praying that nothing popped out of the darkness to blow them to their component atoms.

*****

The bridge situation was both better and worse.

Jane MacKay at least knew what was coming at them, even if she half wished she didn’t. Not that ignorance was an option, of course. It would be bad form indeed for a captain to not at least have some idea of what was happening on, in, and around her ship.

With their forward sensors being all but blinded by the sheer volume of enemy fire, and the knowledge that the enemy ships were certainly within a few hundred kilometers of her own, she almost wished she didn’t know what the ship’s computers saw. At least then she could cherish her illusions that
someone
had to have some kind of idea of what was going on.

She wanted to shout orders, gallantly stand up and spew forth some rousing bullshit to inspire those under her command. Truth was, though, at this point all she could do was hold on and hope that when the ride came to an end she still had a crew to inspire.

The ships shuddered as another salvo of missiles launched.

The last salvo, if she were remembering correctly. She couldn’t be sure, there had been so many noises and bad sounds that maybe she miscounted.

The fight was on computer control now. They’d put in their instructions, told the computers what to do and under what circumstances to do it, and now she was just like everyone else on the Hood.

Cargo.

It was over in the blink of an eye. Literally, one moment she was staring at the onrushing icons that showed the enemy, and then she blinked sweat from her eyes and they were gone. If she were in an atmospheric fighter, she’d have given herself whiplash while twisting around to track the enemy ships.

“Bring our nose about! Pivot on the axis!”

Now she’d just give everyone on board one more set of acceleration bruises.

Huge gyroscopes buried deep in the hull were twisted against their will, and in response the entire ship turned even as powerful retro-thrusters fired to speed the process along. Around them, the rest of Valkyrie did the same, bringing their bows about to once more face the enemy.

It wasn’t about giving chase, there was no chance in hell of that. Even if Valkyrie lit their drives off with enough force to turn their crews to paste, there was no chance they’d be able to catch the alien ships. There was simply too large a disparity between their relative velocities. It would take magic, pure and simple, to catch them now.

They wanted their bows to the enemy for more realistic reasons. First, they weren’t quite through with the shooting and, more importantly, neither was the enemy. Point defense was still firing nearly constantly, the deep shudders running through the decks a familiar and comforting sensation for everyone on board.

As long as the computers determined that their missiles could actually catch up to the enemy, the computers would continue firing those as well, but no one took comfort in the hammering sound of a nuke being launched from its tube.

“Kill the acceleration! Bring us to one gravity!” she called, ignoring the enemy now.

There was nothing she could do about them; the computers would be a better judge of whether it was time to shoot or time to shut up. Now she had to worry about her crew and, preferably, not slamming them into anything particularly large, like, for example, Hayden itself. There was no immediate risk of that, of course, they didn’t make a habit of plotting courses into planets after all. But they couldn’t just stay on their current course either. It would carry them far out of Hayden orbit and potentially away from the assets they were there to protect.