Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (4 page)

The emaciated man shrugged, shaking his head. “I lost count after a while...few dozen. Most in the last week.”

Sweet Jesus
, Sorilla thought involuntarily. That meant that the only prisoners they were getting out alive were those who had been recently captured. No more than a few weeks ago at most, probably less.

“Alright,” she said aloud, forcing her voice to be still. “Start spreading the news, we’re leaving today.”

They grinned in return, many of them recognizing the phrasing. Some of them moved off, already humming the tune, and Sorilla heard them continue on.

“…I want to be a part of it...” the leaders sung softly, smiling as they started pulling people up and helping them out.

Sorilla left them to it, moving around to the Ghoulie bodies and recovering their weapons. The aliens’ hand weapons were energy-based, short little ray guns that made no sound when fired but sure as hell made a nice hole in anything they were pointed at. She grabbed the commander as he half carried a young-looking ensign to the front.

“You know how this works?”

He looked at the weapon, eyes gleaming. “Aye, ma’am. Was briefed just a month ago on captured Ghoulie tech.”

“Alright, you’re drafted,” Sorilla said, ignoring the ma’am comment. Operators didn’t carry rank insignia, for this very reason as much as anything else. He wouldn’t know that he outranked her until they were long off this rock. “Take this and keep an eye by the door. Don’t get trigger-happy on me, Commander. Lots of time for shooting when we break out of here.”

“Aye aye,” he said, taking the weapon carefully.

Like most of the Ghoulie tech they’d found, it was both fairly simple to figure out and pretty damned near impossible. The triggering mechanism was obvious, it wasn’t a lever or anything, but it was a simple blue touch pad against the gray weapon. Run your thumb over it and it would fire. What they could never figure out was how to change the weapon’s settings.

When a human picked up a ray gun taken from a Ghoulie, it could be set anywhere from ‘painful’ to ‘vaporize,’ with a capital ‘VAPOR.’ The Ghoulies easily changed settings on the fly, according to all intel, but there were no other visible controls on the damn things, so captured weapons were stuck on whatever settings they’d been taken on.

Sorilla figured they interfaced with their weapons the way she did with most of her equipment, through the implants she had crammed into various free spaces in her body, but they hadn’t yet found anything in the alien autopsies to indicate any sort of implants.

The commander handed out the few alien weapons they had to a few of his fellows, and they took up space by the door while Sorilla and Jardiens checked the weakest members of their growing troop.

“Not good, Top,” Jardiens told her as she approached. “Severe malnutrition...probably can’t walk, and there’s more here than we can carry.”

Sorilla nodded, raising her voice as she looked around. “Stronger help the weaker. When we move, there won’t be time to play around. We’ll have to get to the treeline quick, then we can slow down a bit, but we have to be out of this valley by...oh-four-thirty this morning, because the Fleet is dropping into town, and they’re delivering some heavy Kilo Kilos right down on this place. Got me!?”

They nodded, those who could, knowing that they didn’t want to be anywhere within fifty kilometers of a Fleet kinetic kill strike.

“Find some shit to make stretchers,” Sorilla said, pointing to the torn chunks of metallic mesh. “Start with that. Jardiens, rip this place apart until we’ve got enough for everyone.”

“You got it, Top.”

“Top,” Lt. Crow’s voice came over her radio again. “Time to un-ass this OA.”

“We need five minutes, sir,” Sorilla replied, grabbing a metal grating and twisting some of it into handles by hand. “Lots of Puckers in pretty bad shape.”

“Expedite, Top. We’ve got incoming, and they don’t look happy.”

“Understood. Expediting,” Sorilla replied quickly, then switched over to the armor’s PA. “Time to move it, boys and girls. We’ve overstayed our welcome and our hosts are coming with the bill. Let’s not be here to pay it!”

The emaciated Fleeters moved quicker, the song swelling slightly as they sang softly to themselves while they worked. Sorilla shouldered her carbine, moving to check the door again as the words to ‘New York, New York’ filled in the background.

*****

“I don’t mean to rush you, Korman, but now would be the time...” Crow growled, looking out the windows of the control center to where enemy flyers were visible in the distance. Across the base he could see the Ghoulie infantry getting their act together too, and he really didn’t want to hang around and try to go toe to toe with a regiment.

“This isn’t easy, sir,” Korman gritted out. “I’ve got two of them for sure, but there are things in the display that just don’t make sense. Missing stuff...missing pieces...”

“Got it, fuck it,” Crow decided, rapping the corporal on the shoulder. “We’re hauling ass in two minutes.”

The Israeli growled in frustration but nodded as he pushed himself off the console and pulled a device from a pouch on his thigh. He turned it over, idly punching in numbers on the small keypad, then tossed it down into a corner as he reached back and pulled his small pack off.

“Locator’s set,” the commando replied, pulling chunks of high explosives from the pack. “I’ll have demo ready in one minute.”

“Good, ‘cause that’s about all we’ve got,” Crow hissed, checking the approaching enemy again. He keyed over to a more powerful frequency. “Able, Mack, come in.”

There was no response, leaving only an unnaturally loud hissing on the channel.

“Able, Mack. Come in,” he called again, looking out toward the edge of the valley where the nuclear mushrooms had collapsed, smoke still rolling down the mountainside. “Able. Mack.”

Finally he gave up, swearing softly to himself before switching back over to the tactical channel.

“One minute.”

Korman nodded, pushing a detonator into the explosive material then keying it open and setting the timer. “Done. Let’s move.”

“Top, we’re moving out,” Crow called as he and Korman headed for the hatch.

*****

“That’s it,” Sorilla called. “Let’s get it in gear!”

The prisoners, even the stronger ones, were weak and moved slowly, but they didn’t have time to be coddling them, unfortunately. Sitting in the middle of an enemy military base wasn’t a naturally safe habitat, and things were about to get a lot hotter, judging from the fiery red icons lighting up Sorilla’s HUD, echoed to her from Crow.

Jardiens helped them shift the last of the immobile prisoners onto the makeshift stretchers, moving them more gently than the impressive armored bulk would indicate he was capable of, then they were dragging the metal grates along the floor while Jardiens and Sorilla paused at the door.

They checked their magazines on reflex, though the onboard computers had already fed them the numbers.

“You good, kid?” Sorilla asked, not unkindly, noting that Simmon’s left foot was twitching slightly.

“Yeah, I’m okay, Top. Wound a little tight is all.”

“Don’t unwind on me until we’re out of here,” she told him, half a smile on her voice.

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Top,” Lt. Crow’s voice called over the team-wide network, “we’re getting ready to break out.”

“Wilco. We’ll need to make lots of noise, L.T., we’ve got lots of Puckers here looking to get un-Pucked.”

“Roger that. Noisy and messy. I think we can stoop to that,” the lieutenant’s voice replied, a hint of humor making it through the encryption. “Moving on three.”

Sorilla acknowledged, turning back as she noticed Jardiens tense, and addressed the commander. “We’re breaking out. Don’t follow us, just head for the perimeter and into the trees.”

He nodded, but Sorilla was already turning back, Jardiens wrenching the door open as she ducked through it and leapt out into the base commons. She flipped her rifle’s power controls all the way up to maximum as she flew, landing in a skid as she swept the carbine around to find the closest grouping of Ghoulies.

The weapon bucked heavily in her armor-shod hands as the rounds roared out of the barrel, well past supersonic, and the crack of the sound barrier being broken tore the air around her. The heavy slugs reached out, briefly connecting her to her targets, and slapped into the stunned aliens even as they were turning toward the motion.

They died before the sound washed over them, but where they fell, others moved to close the breach.

Yelling and screaming erupted behind her as the prisoners rushed out behind Jardiens, but they were drowned out by the echoing cracks of his carbine as it roared in conjunction with hers. The duet became a trio as the lieutenant opened up from across the courtyard, his own weapon barking its righteous anger, and then a quartet sounded as Korman joined in the fight.

They fired short bursts as they dodged in and around the buildings, conserving ammunition as they mostly tried to attract attention away from the fleeing prisoners. In that they succeeded brilliantly, but in short order it was obvious that ‘brilliant’ was a relative term when you were actively trying to draw fire from the enemy.

The Ghoulie infantry, having gotten their act together, returned fire. The silent weapons they carried gave no sound, nor any flash of light to betray their position, but when they struck something, it vaporized with a brief flash of light and concussion as the newly created plasma vented from the hole.

Sorilla was forced undercover in short order, barely escaping a blast that took out almost a square meter of building material just behind her head. She returned fire, but whether she was even aiming at the same Ghoulie that shot at her was an impossible question to answer.

The enemy had the numbers, and within seconds they were bracketing the dodging troopers enough that even their augmented speed and interlocked firing tactics weren’t enough to keep up with the responding fire.

“Fall back!” Crow’s voice called over the tactical channel. “Cover the prisoners!”

They leapfrogged back, pelting the advancing formation of infantry with covering fire two at a time while the other two would jump back a few dozen meters in two or three hops. A whine tearing through the air announced the arrival of an air unit, one of the enemy flyers flashing past them overhead, ignoring them to head straight for the fleeing prisoners.

Sorilla palmed a seeker from her belt, keying it open with a flip of her thumb, then tossed the ball-shaped device underhanded up into the air. It flew up about ten meters under the powered toss, then paused at the apex of its arc as the powerful ducted fan inside it whirred to life. Then, in a flash, it whipped off after the flyer, slamming into the back of the alien bird and detonating its small shaped charge in an explosive lightshow.

As the flyer came crashing down in flames, Sorilla rolled clear of it and came up to one knee to shoot over the ruined vehicle, using the flames and wreckage for cover.

Crow was sprinting toward her, firing back over his shoulder in short bursts, aiming with his rifle cam on the run. His accuracy wouldn’t be worth much, except that with the guidance fins and the seeker heads on each round, he’d probably hit as much as one out of three shots. Especially at the tightly packed formation that was charging along behind him.

The prisoners had spent the entire two minutes since they’d broken out running as best they could for the treeline and were halfway there or more. Sorilla made sure they weren’t being threatened overtly then continued to fire into the enemy ranks as Crow sprinted for cover. Her rifle clicked empty, and she dropped the mag in a smooth motion, slamming a fresh one home just instants later.

As she leveled the weapon again, she caught a flash of light erupt from Crow as he ran, an enemy weapon tearing into his armor at the shoulder. It converted the carbon fiber, and a good chunk of his flesh and bone, into a plasma jet that roared back out the hole it had created, pitching him forward off his feet and into a spin.

Sorilla was moving even before he hit the ground, yelling into the tactical network. “L.T. is down! Cover me!”

The booms of her companions’ weapons rose in crescendo as she dove for Crow’s position, grabbing his good arm as she clawed for purchase and started pulling him backwards away from the enemy. She flipped her rifle over to full guidance mode, without any IFF restrictions, and opened up while struggling to run backwards with the lieutenant’s flopping weight trying to unbalance her.

Her weapon went dry then, and she heard Jardiens curse as his own followed suit. Korman kept shooting, but he had to be running low on that mag too. She let the rifle drop in its sling, struggling to pull the wire line from her belt, then snapped it onto the bolt in the back of Crow’s armor.

The ground beside her roared with flame and concussion as a shot came far too close, causing her to jerk backwards again as she fumbled with her hanging rifle, trying to get a fresh mag into place. The distraction of trying to reload on the run while dragging the lieutenant finally got the best of her as Sorilla’s foot found a loose stone that rolled right out from under her.

She went down hard, dragging the lieutenant’s immobile form up halfway on top of her, and she cursed as she rolled him off and struggled back up to her knees. One glance told the story as the ragged remains of the Ghoulie regiment regrouped, charging her position. They weren’t firing at her, as best she could tell, probably hoping to take her alive. Explosions of superheated plasma erupted around her, though, and certainly drove both Jardiens and Korman back as they were forced to take cover in shallow ditches while they continued to fire back desperately.

Sorilla clawed at the ground, grabbing the magazine she’d dropped, and fed it to her rifle finally. But one look at the host coming down on her told her she wasn’t going to get them all before they got her. She gritted her teeth, leveling the weapon as she prepared to make sure the others did get out, only to hear a sudden whistling sound rip past her ears just before the entire front rank of the Ghoulie line were thrown back into their fellows, spraying grey ichor to the wind.