Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (27 page)

The ground fell away from the plateau like the end of the world. A cloudbank had moved in, and Sorilla could imagine that she was standing on a city in the sky. The jungle below and around them was hidden from sight, thousands of square kilometers of green death vanished so very easily by the vagaries of the weather.

It was an illusion, though. She knew what was hiding out there, beyond the fluffy white clouds and beyond even the dangers of the jungle itself. Out there, deep in the clouds, covered by the jungle, they were waiting.

A glance to one side showed that Jerry was just as taken in by the view as she was, though what he thought of it was hidden behind a dark expression that she’d seen too many times. She just hoped that he got a handle on it. She needed him and his knowledge of the local terrain too badly to leave him behind, but mistakes out there could get them both killed.

“You okay?” she asked aloud.

“I’ll be fine.”

She clapped an armored hand on his shoulder, twisting him around to stare into the blank face of her helm.

“‘ I’ll be fine’ translates into, ‘Why, no, I’m not okay and I’m going to do something so stupid it’ll get us all
killed
’,” she growled. “So next time I ask if you’re okay, you tell me the truth or I leave you behind.”

“Fine,” he gritted out.

“Now, you okay?” she asked again.

“No, I’m not,” he snapped. “Tara’s still out, so we’re without a medic, and Dean is dead. He was our best jungle man, Sarge.”

“Second best.”

He shot her an exasperated look. “Half our team is down. You won’t bring anyone else into it, why the hell not?”

“A two-man team is worlds ahead of a four-man fuckup,” she told him calmly. “We’re forward scouts, not a fire team. We ghost in, tag these fuckers, and call in rods from God. We don’t engage them ourselves, that’s not our job.”

Jerry nodded sullenly.

She grabbed him again, making him look her in the armor-plated face. “I said that’s
not
our job. Got me?”

“Yes, Sarge, I got you.”

“Good.” She nodded to where they were heading, the main path off the plateau. Beyond that, the beams, and then the alien jungle. “You’re the tracker, Jer. Track.”

Jerry nodded, walking forward as he awkwardly slung his military sniper rifle. His eyes were set now, less sullen but as focused as she’d ever seen him.

Sorilla smiled beneath her helm.

Ready or not, here we come.

*****

Hayden Jungles

“Prime.”

Kris half twisted at the voice in his head. “I hear.”

“Two soldiers just left the perimeter of the alien fortification.”

Kris scowled, confused. “Only two?”

“One in Sentinel-type armor.”

“And the other?”

“Unarmored, at least so far as I can see.”

Kris considered it before coming to a conclusion. “A Sentinel and a tracker. They’re looking for us.”

“Sir.”

He could hear the disbelief in his subordinate’s tone and smiled. It did seem absurd on the surface of things, two soldiers looking for an entire squad of Sentinels on their own? He didn’t care how good they were, it was suicide.

Except for those mass movers.

They didn’t need to engage his forces, just find them and mark them, and it was all over.

“Sentinels!” he bellowed. “To me.”

The Lucians in his camp appeared on demand, some from the jungle and others from the ship or outbuildings.

“We’re breaking camp,” he told them. “These two are a direct threat. Until we neutralize it, I want no sign that there is anything here beyond the normal. Are you all in understanding of this?”

Several looked confused but didn’t say anything.

Kris sighed. “The enemy has sent out spotters. Until we find and eliminate them, I want no chance taken that they will call in a mass mover strike on our only
possible
method of leaving this world. You have ten fractionals. Clean this area to the jungle, leave no trace of our presence. Then we move out.”

The Lucians broke, moving to eliminate any trace of their presence. Debris was secured, loose dirt raked over any trace they couldn’t make vanish in the time they had. Broken foliage was rubbed with dirt, making the breaks look older and more natural. Everything was returned to the natural state, or as close as they possibly could, leaving only the ship itself behind.

The lander had an active camouflage, making it near invisible from anything more than point blank range. With the thick jungle around, Kris knew it would take nothing less than a misfortune of epic scale to reveal it.

Maybe he was taking things too far, but he’d learned the hard way so far that he shouldn’t underestimate this Sentinel.

“Yir, Prime here,” he said over the comm. “Do not lose sight of the Sentinel. Do you understand me?”

“Prime. Understood…” There was a hesitation. “But Prime…”

“What is it, Yir?”

“This jungle, Prime. There is no way—”

“Just do what you can!” he snapped. “Close with them if you must, but do not lose them!”

“Yes, Prime.”

*****

The feel of the jungle was different this time, compared to when she’d walked these paths before. There was more sound, like a real place instead of a ghost world. Sorilla couldn’t help but comment on it.

“The animals came back,” Jerry said. “Most of them fled like we did, but once you took out the aliens there on the plateau, they started to come back. It’s taken years, but it’s close to how it used to be. Quieter than usual today, though.”

Sorilla glanced around, overlaying a map on her HUD. “Probably the kinetic strikes I called in earlier.”

“Yeah, that would do it.”

“Still feels more alive than it ever did before,” she said.

“Yeah, well, that just means you need to watch it,” he told her. “There’s not much on Hayden that hunts humans, but mistaken identity is a bitch.”

She snorted. “I hear you.”

They were moving into the jungle now, and she could already feel the hairs on the back of her head standing on end.

They were being watched.

“They’re here,” she said calmly, her tone almost bored.

Jerry swallowed. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Probably just a scout, but they’re here alright.”

He shivered, his spine now itching as he looked around. He didn’t see anything, but he didn’t think she was wrong either.

“Don’t bother, you won’t see them,” she said. “They’re holding back.”

“Why?”

“Waiting for backup.”

“Great.”

Sorilla smiled, though her partner could not see it. “Relax. This works out better than I’d hoped.”

“Better than you’d hoped?” he objected. “Hello, Sarge? I’d rather like to avoid having large chunks of my flesh torn from my body by any alien gravity guns, if that’s alright with you?”

“You could have taken the armor when it was offered.”

Jerry snorted. “That crap won’t stop one of their guns, and you know it. I move easier without it.”

Sorilla shrugged. “But I move faster and hit harder with it.”

“Best hope you move fast enough to hit them first, then.”

“That,” she told him evenly, “is precisely the plan. Stay on the planned route.”

“What? Where are you going to—?” he asked, turning just in time to see her armor change colors to a dark, mottled green as she vaulted up into the crook of a thick tree, paused for just a moment, and then leapt off into the thick of the jungle.

Women and soldiers. They’re both insufferable, they both have hair triggers, and damned if they don’t both think they know best,
he bitched mentally as he slogged on.
Just my luck, I’m stuck teaming up with someone who’s the worst of both worlds all in one.

*****

Sorilla moved quickly, sometimes along the ground and sometimes leaping from one enormous Hayden hardwood to another, spiraling outward from her first position as she looked for her target.

Her HUD lit up, tracking every source of movement and sound that didn’t belong to her, the computer eliminating most hits before she got involved. Of the rest, most belonged to local animals, including some really large spider things that would have given her shudders if she weren’t too busy for that sort of thing.

She had widened her spiral three times before the computer reported something that caused her to slow to a stop. A flash of light from a metallic object glinted in her HUD, bringing her to a stop as she latched one enormous tree limb in mid-leap and swung herself up above the lowest level of foliage. A quick hyper-spectral analysis of the reflected light broke down the metallurgy for her, and her computer ran a database scan only to find no matches in any common or military devices.

Got you.

She glued herself to the tree, trying to pick up the source of the glint. Only after staring at the area it had come from for several long moments in full magnification did she move again, slowly sliding to the ground, where she dropped into a crouch and slung her rifle.

Speed was now forgotten, she kept low and close to the foliage as she crept forward with a conscious aim to emulate the movement of a glacier. Slowly, inexorably, and with absolute determination. One foot moved forward, coming down lightly at first as she tested the ground, then a deliberate shift of her weight as she prepared to bring forth the other.

The scout would be tracking them, probably from indirect cues. The jungle was too thick to allow him to stay eyes on, she was certain of that. His tracking would keep him focused, hopefully enough for her to get close, as one could easily lose themselves in the tunnel vision of an important task. She leaned on her computers to keep from falling into that trap herself, letting them continue to track and report on possible contacts in the periphery of her focus, while she stayed on target.

A moment passed, then another as she moved, one second flowing into the next as she crept along the ground. A snail could match her pace, a turtle blow it away, but all that mattered to Sorilla was finding just the right spot to make the acquaintance of her quarry. She grasped the hilt of her blade in her left hand as she reached a place that looked about right, drawing it from the sheath with a slow and smooth motion.

*****

Yir had been a Sentinel for less than three planetary cycles, but in that time he’d seen action on four worlds. Sentinels were not ones to sit idle. They either fought or they trained to fight, and that was the way things were and the way they liked it. It was the reason they, he, became Sentinels in the first place.

This mission was different than most, though only due to the sheer distance from Alliance center as far as he was concerned. Most times they served an expedition on worlds that actually
mattered
, as opposed to some nowhere planet out in the literal back arms of the galaxy.

Other than that, a jungle was a jungle, in his opinion.

For this reason, it was perhaps forgivable that he froze momentarily when, as he was following his fellow scout through his simple jungle, he saw a shadow drop from above and drive the other Lucian to the dirt. The lapse only lasted an instant, but it was an instant in which both the shadow and his fellow Sentinel were out of site, hidden from him by the jungle foliage. When he passed, Yir surged forward with his weapon at the ready, only to find a dead Lucian on the ground and not a single hint of what killed him.

He stood over the body, weapon ready as he scanned the jungle about him, but found nothing.

“Prime.” He spoke softly, almost surprised that there wasn’t a quaver in his voice.

“Report.”

“Kiran is down. I saw it happen and I still don’t know what hit him.”

“The alien Sentinel spotted you. Watch yourself, we’re coming in on your position as quickly as we can move now.”

“The one without armor is still up ahead,” Yir offered.

There was a brief pause as Prime considered that, then he came back.

“Close on that one. Stay ahead of the armored Sentinel, we’ll converge on your position and close the jaws on him.”

“Understood.”

He heard the click of the channel closing and stepped back from his fallen comrade, eyes still scanning the jungle. He’d actually witnessed the attack but still couldn’t piece together what had happened. He was certain that it was a soldier in camouflage, he’d seen enough for that, but the speed of the attack was startling and even blurred in his memory.

Somewhere, in this jungle with him, was a predator of the highest order.

*****

Sorilla was braced against a thick tree trunk, her armor adapted to blend with the shadows and colors of the bark. The active camouflage built into the armor was a powerful tool, but it was slower and more fragile than she’d prefer. The last couple times she’d been on Hayden, her armor had more carbon baked in by atmospheric entry than a whole crate load of coal. While it didn’t damage the system exactly, it did cover it up, which rendered the color shift ability rather moot, and the only way to clean baked in carbon off was to blast the whole thing and refinish.

The alien soldier walked by her position, his gravity rifle sweeping past her as he looked around, obviously trying to find her. She watched and listened as he said something, noting that her armor was detecting subharmonics well below human hearing range in his voice. She had the computer log everything, knowing that the intel boys would be screaming for every second of data she could get on the alien language.

The Ghoulies didn’t speak, near as they could tell, but it seemed that this species did. At least it was a place to start, that was something she knew the intel division had been hoping for ever since this war began.

After a moment, while she watched and waited, he moved on and vanished off into the jungle.

“Jer.” She recorded a message into her pulse transceiver. “One down. Second is following you. Stay on our agreed course, I’ll eliminate him and catch up shortly.”

She toggled the send command, letting her armor’s communication suite compress the message into a burst pulse before sending it on. She didn’t know if the aliens had their EMF tracking gear active, but it was better to be safe than sorry in this kind of situation.