Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (7 page)

The Parths used a silicate binder, as did a few others in the Alliance, including the Lucians. The rest mostly used other chemical binders with no clear dominating type.

The world they were approaching had all the hallmarks of a Ros’El world, from the orbital distance to the chemical traces in the atmosphere. What it didn’t have, and Reethan was well aware that it should, was a Ros’El beacon letting approaching ships know that they were encroaching on Ros territory.

He let out a low keening sound when he saw the reason why.

Where the records indicated that there should be a Ros facility there was nothing but several very deep craters.

“Sensing station,” he called out. “Are there any chemical or atomic markers?”

“No, sir. Other than dust in the atmosphere, the world is clean.”

Reethan shook his head slowly. “Straight velocity weapons then. Antiquated, but effective.”

“But, Master, how would anyone have gotten velocity weapons through a Ros’ Dimensional Collapse System?”

“That is a very good question,” Reethan admitted, eyes on the screen. “Any signs of Alliance signals from the surface?”

“None, sir.”

“Then we can assume that all the Ros’El were killed in the strike,” he sighed. “Very well. Plot us a course to the next shift point.”

“Course is plotted and on displays, Master.”

“Excellent. Very well,” he said, settling into the ship master’s station. “Let us be on our way, best acceleration.”

“Yes, sir, best acceleration.”

The flotilla turned lazily away from the world they had been examining and began to accelerate toward deep space. Behind them, the dust from the high-velocity strikes was settling into the upper atmosphere. The global temperatures would be dropping soon, Reethan expected, likely the world would experience a micro ice age over the next twenty or so standard intervals.

An impressive display of power, he supposed, but at that it was the least one might expect of an interspecies war. If they didn’t get things under control soon, the Ros’El would likely begin collapsing entire worlds under their own gravity.

The last thing we need is for that sort of mess to start making the rounds of the civilian councilors or, the universe forbid, reach the ears of any spies for the outer empires.

The political fallout of several new planetary singularities floating around the galaxy would be a nightmare enough, but the Alliance really didn’t need to deal with any more propaganda from the outer worlds stirring things up among the civilian population. The Ros’El were unpopular enough, since pretty much no one could understand a damned thing they were saying unless you spoke advanced hyper-math.

No, this war had to be brought to a halt in a hurry before the Ros’El decided that they were being pressed sufficiently to actually bring out their singularity ships.

Leave it to the Ros to wallow in something this deep out in the back end of the furthest reaches of Alliance space.

*****

Hayden

Exiting jump space was always a little jarring, but for Sorilla it had been much worse since she’d fully integrated with her implants. Unlike most of the people on the ships of TFV, her implants were better than latest gen and they had been designed with some thought as to the enemy humans were facing. The good side of this was that she could feel the building influence of a gravity valve as it began to collapse dimensional walls in her area. However, the bad side of it was that she was particularly susceptible to the motion sickness rarely associated with a gravity jump.

It was the result of mixed signals to the brain, in her case enhanced acceleration awareness that had taken her months just to realize existed. The implants fed their acceleration data directly into her brain, originally intended by the designers to be picked up by her neural system and relayed directly to her corneal HUD via the most direct route possible. What even the doctors hadn’t been able to predict was that Sorilla’s brain had immediately begun rewiring itself to make use of the new data directly.

Her sense of balance, something that had always been finely tuned, had since become something only the most talented of gymnasts could hope to approach. She could identify that the ship was now accelerating at one-twelfth gravity even before her CPU finished making the calculations, and her stomach felt like it was turning inside out.

The use of the neural system as part of the implant communication track had been a radical departure from the secure wireless system her old implants used, implemented to increase security and decrease power requirements, but since Sorilla had been used as a test case, they’d stopped all field use of the new implants while observing her to see how she reacted in the mid to long term.

While she often sarcastically commented on how special that made her feel, Sorilla did admit to a certain conceit over being the only field soldier to receive the full suite of next generation implants. The trouble with them was also the benefit, however, in that her nervous system was also hardwired into her brain, and as it turned out, her brain was anything but shy when it came to taking advantage of the new data.

It took months before the first signs showed up, however, and so most of the tech geeks who helped maintain her implants were understandably perturbed by her terribly messy
wetware
integrating itself in unexpected ways with their clean and pure hardware.

Honestly, she wasn’t really over-enthused about it herself, but so far the good had outweighed the bad. Even if she did feel like hurling every time they dropped out of jump space.

“We’re out of jump space,” she said. “Engines are winding up, we’ll be under power in a couple minutes.”

“That’s creepy, Top,” Jardiens mumbled, shaking his head. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Don’t hear you complaining when I let you know the Ghoulies are about to drop a planet on us.” She smirked.

“Still creepy even then, Top.”

The Hood’s VASIMR engines kicked in then, and gravity returned in full force as the big ship began to accelerate down into the system’s gravity well toward Hayden’s orbit. Since the last major engagement in Hayden, the Solari Fleet, or rather the forward assigned elements of it…aka Task Force Five, had been using the system as their main deployment center.

Fleet had finally brought in a new orbital tether about a year earlier, and with that began arming both the planet and the system itself with a defense system second only to Earth’s own. Some of the native-born Haydenites had elected to leave the planet as soon as the tether was reestablished, but most had chosen to stay on despite some ongoing problems with the remains of the invaders waging an ongoing guerilla campaign.

For the most part, there wasn’t a lot they could do, since the majority of the planet was of little to no interest to Earth forces. In fact, in all honesty, had the planet itself been the Earth’s primary concern, they probably would have ordered a full evacuation a long time past and just left it to the invaders.

The system, however, was very valuable, if only as a potential choke point that they could use to focus future enemy assaults on. The reasoning was that it was better to fight them here in Hayden space than to permit them to make it to Earth before putting up any sort of resistance.

The effect of this was to basically cede Hayden to the enemy ground forces while locking down certain key areas such as the tether base station, which had been established at the old colony base so as to allow military and civilian researchers to sift through the debris Sorilla had left during her initial face-to-face several years prior.

Beyond that, the old farms, logging roads, and other varia of Hayden’s former research locations were now strictly off limits due to the threat of encountering the alien guerrillas haunting the jungles. The last time Sorilla had found time to check, she had been both impressed and disturbed by how well the aliens had managed to adapt to Hayden’s ecosystem. Were they actually fighting a force that wanted to occupy the world, she was certain that they’d have done far more damage to the human forces than Earth could have willingly shouldered.

At some point they’d have to be wiped out or, failing that, repatriated back to their own people, or she was betting they’d still be finding alien commandos in the jungle in fifty years, refusing to believe that the war had ended. Assuming, of course, that it did end before that time.

It had better. We’ll bankrupt every Western economy within another ten at this rate,
she thought sourly as they hurtled onward to the jungle world ahead.

*****

Liberation Tether Counterweight, Hayden Orbit

Jerry Reed stepped onto the observation deck of the main tier, strolling casually to where he spotted a red flash of hair. The Earth-normal gravity provided by the centrifugal force of the counterweight wasn’t as fun as the zero gravity of the lower tier, but it was certainly a lot more practical.

“Tara, hey,” he said as he stepped over beside where the nurse stood at one of the observation windows. “I hear Valkyrie is coming in.”

She nodded, giving him a peck on the cheek. “Yes, they jumped in about thirty-six hours ago. Where have you been?”

“Patrol,” he said, returning the kiss. “Clearing out traps and IEDs in the interdiction zone beyond the colony. We’ve given them the jungle, but they want the planet.”

Tara sighed, nodding.

“I just want this to be over,” she said after a long pause.

“It will be, but not until we’ve pushed them off our world for good,” he told her, eyes flickering up to a star that was moving against the background. “Is that them?”

Tara looked where he was nodding as others joined the first. “That’s the heat off their engines as they decelerate toward us. They’re about another twelve hours out, I guess.”

“It’ll be good to see the Sarge again,” Jerry said. “She’s on board, right?”

“Yes, I checked when they registered with Hayden control. She’s listed as active duty, leave pending,” the nurse said. “So she’s alive and uninjured. I’m not sure if she’ll be getting off here for her leave or heading back to Earth.”

“We’re not exactly a vacation spot these days,” Jerry scowled.

“No, but it’ll depend on where TFV is heading next,” she said. “They’ve been out here a long time now, they have to be due for refit.”

“Probably. Still, hopefully she’ll have time to pay a visit, right?” He smiled, poking Tara lightly in the ribs.

It worked. She smiled in turn. “Yeah. Hopefully.”

“Come on, let’s get something to eat,” he said. “Burgers on me.”

“Can we at least make it burger steak?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “I want to eat with a fork and knife for once.”

He chuckled. “For you, I’ll even sweet talk some mushrooms out of the basement.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, hooking her arm in his and letting him lead her away.

*****

USS Cheyenne, Hayden High Orbitals

Admiral Nadine Brookes looked over the latest dispatches downloaded from Hayden OPCOM, noting that the squadron had finally been tagged for refit and downtime.

Task Force Seven must be back to full strength
, she mused idly, wondering how long it had taken to get that done.

TF6 had been assigned to bolster the defense of the inner colonies while TFs Five and Seven had been directed to patrol and push back at the enemy beyond the currently accepted borders of ‘human controlled space.’ She’d heard that Seven had been battered in an engagement with the Alpha, or Ghoulie, type aliens and Valkyrie had been assigned to shoulder their weight while they were refitted.

Now, it seemed, it was Valkyrie’s turn.

She felt that her command was in reasonable shape, though she was far from objecting to the orders. Her crews could use the break, and there was always some piece of maintenance that couldn’t be done short of a proper dock slip and there was only one place in the universe that had any of those at the moment.

Though that will be changing if they get their way at Ares, I’m sure.

As far as humanity’s presence in space, this whole war was likely a blessing in disguise. Despite the original destruction caused by the invaders’ rampage across human territory, the resulting rebuilding and investment in space forces had increased the Solari presence in space by at least ten times.

That didn’t even count the Chinese government’s renewed investments. After decades of leaving the vast majority of their forces in Earth orbit as a not-so-subtle reminder of their strength, even they had finally begun putting ships around their own colonies. There were rumors that they’d lost a colony or two themselves, but no one had managed to get any confirmation on that. The Solari organization and its national partners were too busy elsewhere now to respond to emergency requests from non-aligned worlds…assuming they even had ships in range, which was another longshot.

If we manage to end this war without it burning everything to ashes, we’ll probably be in a much stronger position than we started.

Of course, it was the second part of that little scenario that was the stickler. Nadine was well aware of the growing acceptance for Jane Makay’s theories and what it would mean for humanity if the captain of the HMS Hood were right. They already knew well that they were up against a multi-world empire of some sort, with no less than three species, most likely more than that, in fact.

Since Earth was the only real source of industrial strength in human-controlled space at this time, it was a fair assessment to say that they were operating at a serious disadvantage. She could only hope that they would have enough time and population to give the aliens a good run for their money.

It was bad enough that they were on the wrong side of a technical disadvantage, but to be working from an industrial disadvantage as large as it was beginning to appear they were dealing with…well, that could be a killer.

Literally.

“Cheyenne is in a stable orbit, Admiral.”

She half turned, nodding as Captain Roberts floated into position beside her. “Thank you, Captain.”