Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (29 page)

“What’s going on, Captain?”

“If I’m right, the aliens launched an attack on Hayden over ten minutes ago,” she said. “Given their range, we have less than ten minutes to get to Hayden and plot an intercept.”

“Jane, we still have eyes on the alien ships,” Roberts countered.

“They launched ballistics, Pat,” she countered, queuing up a file and sending it across the command channel with flags for the Cheyenne and Liberation. “I managed to backtrack and triangulate those pulses the admiral asked me about.”

Patrick Roberts swore over the comm but didn’t ask any more questions.

“All stations report go for acceleration!”

“Helm, take us to full military acceleration,” McKay ordered, girding herself for the pain that was about to come her way. “Engage for Hayden when ready.”

“Aye, ma’am! Full military acceleration in three…two…one!”

The powerful antimatter drive of the HMS Hood roared to life, slamming her occupants back against their acceleration bolsters with the force of vehicular collision, only infinitely more sustained. They sucked up the pain, however, and focused on their jobs because that was the only thing they could do.

Behind them, the USS Cheyenne lit off her drives a few handful of seconds later, and the two ships of Valkyrie’s first cohort threw themselves across the night and once more until the path of danger.

*****

Tether Counterweight Station Liberation

“General, emergency message from the Hood.”

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Kane asked as he walked over to the station.

The young woman frowned, reading quickly before answering. Her eyes widened as she paled. “They say we have incoming Kilo Kilos, sir!”

Kane snapped around, eyes flying to the plots, but he didn’t see a damned thing.

“Are they sure?” he asked, half turning back.

“Probable cause, not certainty, General. The alien ships were playing with gravity, and Captain MacKay believes she worked out what they were doing.”

“Fine,” he said, frowning for a moment.

Kane didn’t know Captain MacKay, but that didn’t matter. She’d called wolf, so he had to believe that they were baying at the door.

“All stations, go full active,” he ordered. “Maximum power on every beam. I don’t want an
inch
of space to go uncooked! Everyone else, man the passive screens! Report
anything!
”

“Yes, sir! RADAR and LIDAR stations to full power! Accelerometer discrimination to lowest setting!”

Kane winced, knowing just how much data that last bit would flood his people with, but there was nothing to be done about it. At the lowest discrimination setting, the accelerometer would detect every chunk of rock larger than a hundred kilograms, which was one hell of a lot of chunks of rock. The people scanning those screens would have to get lucky to spot an incoming Kilo Kilo, but at least they had the chance to
get
lucky.

The problem was, any respectable kinetic kill weapon was going to be coming at them at one horrendous speed. Not light speed, sure, but up there in the significant percentages of it. What made that a real problem was that their best detection systems only functioned at light speed.

What this mean was that, between the time it took for a detection pulse to go out, hit the target, and bounce back…well, their light speed detection device had to travel twice the distance that the enemy weapon did. If it was moving even close to one half the speed of light, and was already close enough, they wouldn’t even see it coming.

*****

Hayden Jungle

This is some fucking
scouting
mission
!
Sorilla swore as the jungle was torn apart around her.

The enemy weapons were too familiar to her, having been on the wrong end of the portable valve weapons enough times to wake up with night chills more than once in the past couple years. Not remotely as powerful as the shipboard weapons, the small arms version was still enough to tear chunks out of most materials, including OPCOM armor, as a few of her late comrades could attest.

Her assault rifle stuttered against her shoulder, barely registering in her armor, as she fired back into the jungle. The enemy had the drop on her, but best she could tell, they had not been able to completely close the snare.

Jer saved my ass.

There hadn’t been another shot from his position, however, and she was more than a little worried about that. With all the compression pulses flying around her head, tearing up the dirt and the jungle with equanimity, she figured she had cause to be concerned.

Unfortunately, the enemy did have her pinned down, and things weren’t looking all that great from her position. Her right hand on her gun, tracking and firing at anything that even looked like it might move, Sorilla grasped about with her left to secure the enemy’s weapon. She didn’t need to check it to know two things about it. First, it wasn’t a Ghoulie gun, so there would be controls she could change, and second, it would already be set to ‘high.’

The big grey dudes didn’t fuck around.

They had weird ergonomics, but a trigger was a trigger, and she wrapped her hand around the weapon with some difficulty as she clambered to her feet. With her assault rifle in one hand and the alien gravity weapon in the other, Sorilla began to fall back with both implements of death spitting furiously into the living jungle about her.

She stayed as low as she could, practically duckwalking backwards as she made her way to where she’d last had sign of her erstwhile companion. Sorilla found herself in the unenviable position of having to move fast while trying to keep her head as low as possible, and, as she would be more than willing to testify, the two were mutually incompatible actions.

“Jerry!” she growled, not looking back or bothering with the compression pulse transmitter. She transmitted live, knowing that the enemy already had her position. “Jerry! Damn it, man! Answer!”

The one good thing she could say about her situation was that Hayden hardwood trunks were both massive and quite able to absorb a few strikes from even the alien small arms. She ducked behind one as a fusillade of gravity pulses tore into the far side. She felt the tree shake and shudder as large chunks were literally blown apart, molecular bond by molecular bond.

When she heard a low groan, followed by a distinctive creak, Sorilla knew that it was time to abandon her position.

The sound of the huge jungle tree slowly shifting until its center of gravity reached the tipping point was enough to drown out the roar of her gun and the explosions of the enemy’s strikes. She ignored it all as she ran, still backwards, with guns blazing until her assault rifle dry fired.

Half empty, Sorilla turned and made her break. She turned and bolted, leaning hard into her run as she made her armor-powered legs push like they’d never pushed before. Enemy fire exploded around her as she dove, rolling as she hit, and sliding to a stop beside Jerry’s body.

“Jerry!” Sorilla cast her rifle aside, still firing the alien gravity weapon as she reached out and shook him with her now free hand.

When he didn’t react, she keyed open her armor ports and tore his light armor from his chest so she could lay her hand on his skin.

Thank God, he’s still alive.Blood loss, possible concussion, and various other nasty sundries, but he’s still alive.

She only then took in the state of his injuries and realized that his right hand was gone, pieces of his shattered rifle embedded in what remained, as well as his right side.

She swore, barely looking in the direction of the enemy as she continued to fire one-handed into the jungle. With Jerry in risk of bleeding out, Sorilla yanked his small medical pouch, first hitting what was left of his forearm with an auto-injector filled with a powerful coagulant and then wrapping him up as best should could one-handed.

Well this is a fine mess I’ve walked us into.

Sorilla cast about, more than a little desperation starting to seep into her soul as the world continued to explode violently around her.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Sorilla didn’t think she was going to be walking out of her own power.

Not this time.
She glanced about for a moment, then shielded Jerry with her own body and turned the alien gun on the ground a short distance away before triggering a series of pulses that showered them both with dirt and rocks.

“Sorry ‘bout this, Jer,” she said as she dragged him over to the hole she’d just blown open, dropping him in as gently as she could. Which was to say, not terribly. “Walked you into a trap. My fault. Should have known better, didn’t think they’d bring down their whole force on us though.”

She was working as she rambled, talking to herself more than to her unconscious comrade. More shots went into the jungle, just to keep the enemy guessing, and she climbed into the hole herself. Sorilla curled Jerry into a ball, putting him in fetal position as she covered him with her body and clapped her hands over his ears.

“Liberation, Aida.”

“Go for Liberation, Sergeant.”

“Code Alamo.”

“Say again, Sergeant?”

“Alamo. Alamo! ALAMO!”

*****

Kris bared his teeth as he pushed forward.

The target had been all he could have asked for, had the Sentinel been under his command, but it was clearly the end for the alien soldier. The return fire now was light, undirected, and basically ineffective.

He ceased fire, signaling his troops to do the same.

They spread out, closing on the enemy in an encircling maneuver now. They had his position, and it was nothing but a matter of time.

“Easy,” he ordered quietly. “I’d like this one intact, if we can.”

“Yes, Prime.”

Slowly, they approached through the jungle, almost within reach now, and then a distant rumble of thunder caused him to pause. Kris glanced up, barely able to believe what his instincts were screaming.

“Oh, very well played.”

The world exploded.

*****

Tether Station Liberation

“Say again, Sergeant?”

The weapons technician could hardly believe what he’d just heard. He’d had to look up the order in his HUD just to verify that it really was what he thought it was.

“Alamo,” the sergeant replied, her voice tense. “Alamo! ALAMO!”

He swallowed hard, hand reaching for the controls. They started shaking before he could key in the command, and he abruptly yanked them back as he squeaked out a call. “Sir!”

“What is it, Corporal?” Lt. Commander Sear asked, walking over.

Corporal Kinzie, the weapons technician, swallowed hard. “Code Alamo from the surface, sir.”

“What?” Sear leaned in. “Are you certain?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sear was pale now as he straightened and turned around. “General!”

Kane growled, looking over. The last thing he wanted was to be distracted right at this moment, but in the end, he wasn’t certain he had anything he could do with their main crisis so why not a new one?

“What is it?”

“Sergeant Aida has called in Code Alamo!”

The entire room went silent, those who weren’t absolutely focused on their duties looking up and between them.

Kane heard it, but almost didn’t believe it. He surged over. “Play back that request.”

He listened to the recording, then nodded.

“Code Alamo authorized.”

“Sir…”

“Do it!”

“Yes, sir,” Kinzie said, still stricken pale as he entered the coordinate pattern, but his hand shook again as he reached for the final command.

Kane had no patience for the delay, however, and pushed him out of the way.

“Best journeys, Sergeant,” he whispered and then pressed the touch screen command.

It was wrong, he thought, that there was no sign, nor sound, of the thing he had just done. He had just likely killed his own soldier, there should have at least been a sign it had happened.

“General! Inbound tracks on the screens!”

No time for morbidity, Kane spun away from the kinetic launch controls and turned to face the scanner displays.

From the dealer of death,
he thought as he looked at the dozen incoming tracks showing high velocity kinetic weapons aimed at his command,
to its recipient.

*****

USS Cheyenne

Nadine Brookes found herself little more than a passenger on her own ship, in her own squadron even. When the captain called the general quarters alarm, she barely had time to get herself strapped in before the drives lit off, and while she’d been a little miffed by it, she could hardly blame either Patrick or Jane for the decision.

The Cheyenne was tearing after the Hood, seconds from rollover to enter Hayden orbit, and she knew that this was going to be one frightfully unfriendly maneuver.

“All hands, stand by for roll over.”

Nadine closed her eyes, there wasn’t really anything else she could do anyway.

The omnipresent thrum of the ship’s drive vanished, along with the crushing acceleration force, but only for a few paltry seconds. Bow and stern thrusters roared, supplementing the big gyros that flipped the ship end for end, and then the drives lit off again and she was being crushed into her bolster as they started emergency deceleration into Hayden.

They had tracks now, ballistic inbounds showing on the displays. A dozen rocks, iron core as best they could detect, and each of them a hundred times the mass of a kinetic slug launched from human ship or station.

“Firing solution ready, Captain.”

The voice of the tactical station’s man was steady, even under the pressure they were all crushed by.

“Fire as she bears,” Patrick Roberts ordered, his own voice only just barely showing the strain of acceleration pressure. “All tubes. Rapid fire.”

As the hundred-kilo slugs erupted from the Cheyenne, ahead of them the HMS Hood also went to rapid fire on all tubes. Beyond Valkyrie’s first cohort, Nadine could see other ships and Liberation station doing the same.

The only problem was, she’d already done the math.