Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (24 page)

The real issue came in that it was impossible to miss a starship tearing through the atmosphere; you could see it across
continents
.

If there was an active gravity valve on Hayden, they were about to make themselves one unmistakable target.

“All hands, this is the captain. Stand by for VASIMR firing in ten seconds.”

The hull of the Cheyenne was just starting to feel the kiss of Hayden’s atmosphere when the VASIMR drives went to one-gravity acceleration. Its nose tipped down into the planet’s gravity well, the Cheyenne penetrating Hayden atmosphere at five times the recommended entry velocity and accelerating.

The air exploded ahead of them, wings of fire erupting out around the nose of the Cheyenne and sweeping back to envelop the entire ship.

“Cheyenne computers advise we deploy aerobraking systems.”

“Belay that!” Patrick ordered. “Maintain acceleration.”

“Aye, sir, maintaining acceleration.”

He stabbed his finger down on the panel in front of him, linking into the operator channel for a moment. “Operators, standby for deployment.”

*****

Her vision was clouded in red, her implants coloring her view as the jump warning activated. Her eyes glowed red as she opened them in her armor, the HUD coming online from sleep mode.

“Operators, stand by for deployment.”

The captain’s voice was distant, Sorilla’s heartbeat already winding up as she fully awoke. She kept her breathing controlled, but everything else about her was preparing for what was to come as the red light pulsed behind her eye.

“All teams, this is it,” Washington said calmly. “Once we launch, we won’t have access to the Cheyenne’s fiber network. That means we go com-silent. I say again, com-silent. Remember your training, follow your lead man down, and don’t forget the lessons you got from Top. Ton out. Ohh rah.”

“Hoo rah!” they all called back automatically.

The light behind their eyes turned yellow.

“This is gonna SUUUCKKK!” someone yelled just as the light flashed once and turned green.

Sorilla went first, a mule kicking her right between the shoulders as her capsule was blown clear of the Cheyenne. The same blasted mule kicked her again, this time across her whole body, as the capsule hit the airstream and suddenly decelerated down and away from the starship.

She felt the capsule crack under the pressure, its job of protecting her from the first sudden whiplash done. As the capsule split open and blew away, Sorilla threw her arms and legs out to catch the wind, stabilizing her fall, and then leaned back into a dive as she watched the flaming mass of the Cheyenne rumble away above her.

Then it was gone, and she was looking down at the dark side of Hayden as she tucked her arms in close, legs together, and dove for the deck as fast as she could fall.

She couldn’t see behind her but trusted in her team.

They were there.

*****

“All operators away.”

“Increase thrust to the VASIMR. It’s time to leave before we overstay our welcome,” Patrick ordered calmly.

“Aye, sir. Increasing thrust.”

“Two gravities, Mr Graham.”

“Aye, sir, two gravities,” the helmsman responded.

The crew and captain of the Cheyenne were slammed back into their acceleration bolsters as the big ship missed plowing into a mountaintop by only a few thousand meters then slowly climbed away as the curve of the planet fell out beneath them.

Behind the flaming starship, invisible in the night, three teams of combat operators plummeted to the jungle below. As night sky gave way to space-black, the Cheyenne once again missed the ground it had thrown itself at.

Chapter Eight

Upper Atmosphere, Hayden

It was silent as Sorilla plummeted through the dark of the Hayden night, only the stars overhead to provide illumination now that the Cheyenne had thundered out over the horizon. The armor was filtering out the roar of the wind, and her face was bathed in the green light of the helm’s HUD as it flickered in light-gathering mode to show her the ground rushing up to meet her.

She adjusted to the south slightly, still in a steep dive, already eyeballing the mountains to her right as she began to approach their peaks. A couple thousand meters over the top of the mountain range, Sorilla snapped her arms out and opened the glide wings attached to her armor for this entry.

There was a brief crush of acceleration as she slowed rapidly, her dive turning into a fast glide that took her into the mountains just as the sheer faces of those mounds of rock began to rocket skyward all around her. She banked hard to the right, turning into the range and circling around one of the mountains, following the contours of the valley down to the jungle below.

Behind her, like raptors on a hunter’s dive, her team followed while the other two teams split off to the north and south.

Sorilla remained focused on the LZ, however, aiming for a familiar logging road that ran north to south from the old colony site out through the jungle. Once she had it in sight, Sorilla closed up her wings and dove again, picking up speed as the others in her team followed one by one in single file.

She snapped out the glide wings again as she approached the last few thousand feet to the jungle below, flashing over the colony site like a wraith in the night. A few last-minute adjustments were made, lining her up with the road, and Sorilla led her team down into the jungle at more than 800 kilometers per hour.

The jungle canopy began flashing by in her peripheral vision as she descended to the last fifty meters or so, flying along the old logging road at insane speeds. As she reached the last ten meters, Sorilla flared her glide wings and pulled up into a climb as she bled speed in exchange for altitude, just moments from a lethal crash landing.

The timing was tricky on this maneuver, as she had to slow enough that, when she deployed her chute, it would be able to keep her from plummeting the last little distance to the ground and possibly injuring herself, but not so much that she actually stalled her glide and was going too slowly to properly deploy her chute. In either case, she’d plummet maybe fifty or sixty meters to the ground and probably injure herself to one degree or another.

Ironically, Sorilla knew that she’d probably break something more serious than when she’d originally slammed into the Hayden jungle floor at near terminal velocity a couple years previously. That time, she’d be unconscious and totally limp when she hit, leaving her body more able to take the impact. If she screwed up now, she was going to see it coming, and there was almost no way she’d be able to force herself to relax before striking the ground.

As she started to climb, still moving several hundred kilometers per hour, Sorilla triggered her chute and felt it snap her back hard. She swung crazily under the large cargo class chute, like an out of control pendulum, but the timing was right and by the time she landed she was only moving two or three times the normal speed for a sky diver on Earth.

Normally, that might be a problem, but in armor Sorilla took the impact without so much as a grunt and instantly pivoted as she dropped to one knee and started reeling her chute in.

There were those on Earth who could pull off the landing maneuver without a chute, though the majority of them wouldn’t dare try it with 150 kilos of weapons and kit. Sorilla had done it more than once, including a few times in full kit as part of earning her space wings. But no one on her team was trained for it, and even she didn’t care to try it on Hayden, where the air pressure and gravity were both different from Earth.

As she bundled her chute, Sorilla watched Ton hitting the ground like a sack of rocks as the next three chutes became visible against the night sky just beyond him.

So far, so good.

She checked her gear then tossed it under a tree by the side of the road before walking toward where Ton was getting his chute under control. As she approached, Sorilla activated the NFC com channel.

“You good, sir?”

“All good, Top,” Ton replied calmly over the same channel.

The Near Field Communications channels were specially designed radio frequencies that were completely undetectable past about fifty meters. Originally designed for secure communications between things like credit cards and cashier stations, NFC turned out to be very useful for military communications between squadmates when you didn’t want to use longer-range frequencies…even encrypted ones.

Sorilla nodded quickly as she sprinted past him, grabbing Crow’s chute and helping the lieutenant pull in the mass of material. Before they were done with that, Ton had moved past them to help the next in line, and then Sorilla finished up by helping the last man down. It took only moments to get all the gear organized and the group ready to move, and then they vanished into the jungle, leaving only a half a handful of footprints to show their passage.

*****

USF forward operating base

Hayden

Brigadier Kayne growled as he read the latest list of memos from the lunar satellite. The fact that the USF had elected to deploy operators to the theatre didn’t surprise him, but he would have preferred if they’d cycled through the FOB before entering the AO. Now he’d have to try and keep his people from shooting at them.

On the plus side of the equation, that wouldn’t be as hard as it normally was. The enemy used significantly different weapons and really didn’t look anything like humans beyond a general humanoid shape. Compared to some situations he’d encountered in the past, this was reasonably safe and clear cut.

There had been times when he was in charge of peacekeeping units who had to be ordered
not
to return fire against sniper threats, because there were operators in the field conducting counter-sniper missions and it was fifty-fifty that they’d shoot the wrong guys. Those situations were always a public relations nightmare on the home front, since reporters invariably would tell everyone about the “no shoot” orders. But since they were unaware of the classified actions of the operator teams, the people at home were constantly under the impression that their sons and daughters were being tied out to slaughter and not even permitted the right of self-defense.

Speaking of which…
Kayne paused for a moment before smiling. 
I knew I was feeling too relaxed. No reporters. That’s a big plus about this duty assignment, that’s for sure.

That amusing thought aside, he had a fair bit of work to do now that Fleet had shown the flag back in the system again and was looking to hang around a little longer. Due to the problem with the new aliens ambushing his patrols, he’d pulled them back into closer areas where they could better support one another and be supported by drones.

Now they were going to have to start pushing out again and hope that the operator teams would be able to change the tide of the battles.

*****

North of USF FOB

Hayden

Locating one of the patrol units was child’s play for the operators, and by morning Sorilla was looking down from a thickly covered hill at the passage of a standard reconnaissance platoon being led by a Hayden pathfinder she recognized from her time training the man.

Richard Devon,
she thought idly, eyes flicking over the platoon as she noted the implant signatures from each of them. 
Good jungle hand, not so good with his rifle.

Indeed, the man had opted not to carry a rifle on this patrol, apparently sticking with a heavy caliber, auto-loading pistol he must have pulled from base stores.

No way a civilian picks one of those up otherwise,
Sorilla knew.

There was a significant difference between civilian weapons and military issue, starting with the caliber limitation that kept handguns and rifles to fifty caliber or smaller. Larger military calibers were also generally harder hitting, often explosive or incendiary, and usually packed significant smart circuitry. Just firing a single magazine from a military issue weapon was usually more than a casual civilian could afford.

She was just close enough to the platoon to have riffed their gear, much the same way she’d used her IFF sensors to locate them in the first place. The local battle network wasn’t as complete as it would be on Earth, but Sorilla and her team had enough to know that there were three patrols in the area plus two squads of Cougars rolling backup a few kilometers behind them.

She was mildly surprised to see that they didn’t have any of the smaller and nimbler DOGs with them, however.

She looked over her shoulder, farther back up the hill she was squatting on, and held up her hand then showed one finger before closing her fist.

A second later, from a hundred meters up the hill, she saw Ton appear from the jungle for an instant and lift his own hand, circling it vertically.

Sorilla dropped her arm and moved north, paralleling the platoon as they made their way through the jungle. It was going to be a long day, but as distasteful as it was, it was a lot more effective to use the patrols as bait than it would be to stumble around the jungle looking for them.

To the east of her position, two of the people she was watching were holding a quiet conversation as they moved through the jungle. Had she been close enough, Sorilla probably would have smacked them for the slack discipline, particularly the man she’d personally spent time training.

“It feels like we’re being watched every time we go out now,” Richard said as he fingered his pistol, eyes scanning the jungle.

“Assume that we are,” The lieutentant, a man named Chisholm according to her database, told him as the two walked in the center of the platoon’s formation, heading north toward the old colony site. “It’s safer that way.”

“The general said that Fleet sent in some new people…”

“Yeah,” Chisholm nodded, “operators. Warfare specialists. They’ll be out looking for these bastards.”