Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (32 page)

How the hell did he get one?
Sorilla grimaced as she thought that. He took it from a dead soldier, of course.

She swung her blade up to meet the hack of his, meeting edge with edge and reflexively blinking her eyes at the clash. Diamond shards pelted her face as the two weapons bit into one another, but she ignored the small cuts and ground her blade against his to deflect them both to one side, then hammered her still-armor-covered fist into his face.

Without power, the blow didn’t have the force it might once have. However, she was freed of the confines of the armor that slowed her upper body and arm motions. The armor on her lower arm and hands just provided some extra mass to drive into her enemy, and she fully planned to take advantage of just that.

He fell back as she repeatedly hammered her fist into his face, or what she supposed passed for a face. A human would have little more than a bloody pulp where his nose and cheekbones were by this point, but all she could see different on the alien was some dirt that had transferred from her knuckles.

It was downright depressing.

His counterattack came so fast that she just barely had time to blow all the air out of her lungs voluntarily before he did it for her. Her muscles tightened in her midsection, but his blow was still enough to fold her in half and lift her feet from the ground.

No question,
she though, pained.
He’s stronger than any human I’ve ever fought.

From her curled up position, half leaning on the opponent to keep from falling over, Sorilla spit out a gob of blood and saliva that spattered over the alien’s boots. He didn’t seem to notice as he grabbed her knife hand and lifted her upright. He grunted and snarled at her some more, but she ignored him as she drew in air to replace that which she’d lost and tried to steady herself.

*****

“You are a stubborn little being, I will grant you that much respect,” Kris growled at the surprisingly frail alien.

Without the armor helping him, Kris was surprised both by how weak the alien actually was and by how very much tenacity it held all the same. Using leverage, skill, and determination, it had drawn out this fight far longer than Kris would have expected.

Still, as long as he was able to control the alien’s blade hand, there was little it could do. Even the barrage of strikes it made earlier had been only slightly more than annoying. Drawing the alien up so he could get a better look at it, Kris frowned somewhat.

Odd. This one seems to be differently configured than the others. Different species? Or a gender difference?

He shrugged, it didn’t really make any difference to him. It would be nice to know at some point, if only so he could recognize which gender of the species was obviously the more lethal, but that was for another time.

The alien glared at him, an expression that seemed almost universal by his reckoning, and spat its body essence in his face. He grimaced, but didn’t wipe it away. Unlikely that any bacteria or diseases would have any effect on him anyway.

“That won’t help you,” he started, only to be startled when the alien exploded into action again.

*****

Sorilla screamed, planting her foot into the side of his knee joint and kicking as hard as she could. The leg buckled, and as he began to topple, she kicked down and then planted her other leg in his midsection and twisted her body into a flip. As she used the momentum to wrench her hand free, Sorilla kicked the alien in the face on the way by and then landed in a crouch as he continued to fall.

Guess going for the joints works no matter what planet the scumsucker calls home.

She had to brace her hand on the ground to keep from falling over, however, and a pain in her chest told her that she at least had some bruised ribs. That, combined with the blood she was spitting out, told her that the damn alien she was facing was likely to do what the kinetic strike didn’t.

Sorilla shifted her grip on the blade in her hand and tensed.

If I’m dying here, it won’t be alone.

She lunged into him, aiming to gut him with the diamond blade.

Off balance though he might have been, the alien still moved faster than she’d expected. Her knife was deflected to one side as he countered with a low thrust of his own. She twisted around it, planting a foot on a tree trunk as the blade skirted past her abdomen and kicked off to drive her shoulder into him before he regained balance.

The force drove them both to the ground, rolling and scrambling for purchase, leverage, and an opening. As they grappled, the two continued to roll and tumble about, knees driving into any place they could find and generally just doing anything they could to inflict pain on the other.

Sorilla hated to admit it, but it was clear by the second tumble in the dirt that she was getting the wrong end of that particular stick. While she was able to effectively keep his blade out of the fight, the alien had strength and speed. But his knife fighting skills weren’t on the same level at all; he was hammering through her defense with his free hand, and she could feel broken bones rubbing against each other with almost every move she made.

Knowing that she had to end the fight then and there, or lose it for certain, Sorilla marshaled what was left of her energy for a last attack only to fall back in shock as an explosion shook the world around them again.

The alien was no less startled, and both of them cast about to see fireball tearing through the upper atmosphere, heading for the horizon, thankfully. Behind them, a mushroom cloud was climbing from the ground, and Sorilla had to admit that it was a hell of a lot bigger than you got from a fleet Kilo Kilo.

“Holy shit. What the hell?”

Her opponent seemed similarly perturbed, though that could be wishful thinking on her part. Between the blood in her eyes, the pain all over her body, and the concussion she was pretty certain she had, Sorilla expected that hallucinations were eminently possible at the moment. She looked between her opponent and the fireballs that punctuated the rolling mushroom cloud, honestly wondering if that mean her side was winning…or his?

Crap.

Fireballs on the world her side controlled almost
never
meant her side was winning.

Sorilla tensed, ready to make her last stand, but was again stalled when another familiar sound began to echo off the ground and terrain around them. She glanced in the direction of the colony site and could see a pair of rapidly growing dots in the sky.

She smiled, blood dripping from her teeth as she shifted the grip on her knife.

“Winning…losing,” she said with an edge to her voice. “I’m the one with backup on the way.”

Understanding her or not, the alien seemed to recognize the situation. He stood, obviously undecided for a long moment, then finally vaulted a fallen tree trunk and vanished into the strewn field and beyond that into the jungle itself. Sorilla watched him go for a long moment, eyes searching for any sign of his return, and then she collapsed where she had been standing.

“I got nothing left,” she whispered, mentally toggling her transponder. “I hope they brought blankets. I think I’m getting cold.”

*****

Kris wanted nothing more than to curse the fates, but the situation was clear. He’d tarried too long, played too many games. The alien was skilled, determined, and clearly didn’t know how to quit.

Sentinel, indeed.

That the alien was also relatively weak made little difference. These people were dangerous.

At the moment, however, he had other concerns.

Most of his Lucians were now dead, those few who weren’t would be shortly if the planet was under serious bombardment. He had to get to the assault transport and find out what was going on.

“All Lucians, Prime speaking. Return to the ship,” he ordered in Sentinel code before switching to Alliance spoken. “All personnel, return to the ship.”

*****

USS Cheyenne

While Captain Roberts was directing search and rescue efforts for the Hood, Admiral Brookes was desperately trying to regroup her squadron.

With the Hood down, and some of the ships still out of Hayden orbit because of earlier search and rescue efforts, she was down to maybe half her squadron effective for current deployment. She got them more or less pointing in the direction before distracting Captain Roberts.

“Patrick,” she said tiredly, painfully, and regretfully. “I need you to detach the search and rescue units to Liberation control.”

“Ma’am, there are survivors on the Hood.”

“I know that, Liberation will see to them,” she said. “If we don’t keep those bastards on the move, they’ll hit us again. Detach your people to Liberation. That’s an order, Patrick. We’re moving out.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Nadine could hear the anger and reproach in his voice, but that was his job. He had to think about the crews; she had to think about the system. Nadine opened a link to the remaining ships in the squadron. “New flight plans are on your stations. Engage when ready, adjust acceleration to match squadron formation Gamma Nine.”

A minute passed, then another, and finally the Cheyenne’s drives lit off and she was slammed down into the acceleration bolster as the flagship of Task Force Valkyrie led the remnants of the squadron out of Hayden orbit.

*****

Parithalian Alliance Ship
Noble Venture

“They survived the impacts.”

Reethan nodded, impressed despite himself. “I would not have guessed that they could disconnect that station from the thread. Foolish of me, I suppose.”

His apprentice shrugged. “Pardon my disagreement, Master, but I don’t believe that ‘foolish’ would be correct. We’ve never seen such things before, there was no reason to expect them to disconnect like that.”

“Perhaps,” Reethan said, noncommittally. “In this case, it matters little.”

“They’re coming out after the flotilla,” the apprentice offered up.

“Of course they are,” the ships master said. “They have no real choice, do they? If they remain there, we would hammer them from here until there was nothing remaining in orbit of that world but the dust of their hulls.”

He considered for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll meet them. They no longer have the numbers, nor the station and moon to use as tactical tools. Eliminate the mobile force, then take care of the station at leisure.

“Yes, Master.”

A few moments later, he could feel the slight gravity shift as the ship’s drives powered up and knew that they were under way to meet the enemy.

He felt for these aliens, in an odd way. They were decent ship handlers, and any Parithalian had to respect that, but they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever it was that drew the Ros’El and Alliance leadership’s attention to them, it was certainly a bad omen for their little pocket empire in this corner of the galaxy.

“Master of Ships!”

Parath looked over sharply, not liking that particular sound. “What is it?”

“Gravitational shift in the outer system.”

“Put scanners on it!”

The displays blinked, showing the outer system and the origin of the shift. Reethan stared for a long moment, then slowly shook his head.

“Scan and record. Every detail. Ship handler!”

“Master!”

“Make course for the reciprocal outer system.”

“Master?”

Reethan sighed, eyes going to the display that showed the small band of ships coming out to do futile battle with his flotilla. He was a military man, but not a murderer. There was no point now. Destroying those ships would be nothing less than murder and, at worst, might just leave him and his flotilla exposed to the newcomers.

On the main screen, coming in from the outer system, were ships of a class he’d never scanned before. They were certainly
not
Alliance ships, and they outnumbered his force by twice again in numbers.

More importantly, the oddly shaped ships were all accelerating into the system at ninety percent his ship’s maximum.

“Get us out of here, ship handler. Make course for Alliance space,” he ordered, tiredly.

We’re going to have to come back with a fleet if we want to burn these people out of this system. What a waste.

*****

USS Cheyenne

“Hailing signal, Captain.”

Roberts looked up sharply, confused.
Who?

“Identifies as the USS Terra!”

“Confirm IFF!”

“Aye, sir. Codes accepted, she’s one of ours.”

Roberts was silent for a long moment, rather shocked, to be honest. They’d been expecting relief, to be sure, but he’d never heard of the Terra. Hadn’t even heard whispers of it in the traffic from home.

“Accept the signal. What do they have to say?”

“Advises that we break off, sir. They say that they’ll take on the enemy ships.”

Roberts considered, but really there was only one response he could make.

“Admiral?”

“Break off, Captain. Turn us around, we’ll continue with search and rescue efforts,” Nadine Brookes said, no small amount of relief in her voice.

“Yes, ma’am. Helm, turn us around.”

“Yes, sir.”

They were rolling the ship when another gasp was heard from the sensor station.

“What is it now?” Roberts asked with a fair degree of trepidation.

“The Terra, sir, and her fleet!”

“What about them?”

“They’re accelerating in system, sir.”

Roberts rolled his eyes, he’d rather expected that much.

“Making three hundred gravities and climbing.”

The captain of the USS Cheyenne swallowed. He’d not expected to hear anything like that.

*****

Medical Center, Hayden COMCEN

Sorilla was awake as they wheeled her into the long medical wing of the military base, but between her implants stimulating production of dopamine and endorphins and the natural reaction to coming down off a combat high, she wasn’t really seeing much of anything. Her mind was still back in the dirt, watching the alien run off. She remembered tensing for one last attack, knowing that it really was going to be her last, and then the explosions and distractions bought her enough time for the evac lifters to show up.