Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (25 page)

“Like the Sarge.”

“Yeah, probably.” The lieutenant shrugged. “But they’ll be strike teams this time.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I haven’t checked the files, but word is that Aida was part of a recon team. Their job is to move in, check out the area, and signal Fleet,” Chisholm said, head moving on a swivel as he examined the jungle they were passing through. “The group they’ll have sent this time will be on definitive search and destroy. Your ‘Sarge’ was an SF trainer, her specialty was teaching people to fight. You got lucky there, I’d say. That was the one specialty you guys needed in the worst way.”

“I’m not going to argue with you on that. So, this group is different?”

“Yeah. Snipers, jungle warfare specialists, demo men,” Chisholm said. “The sort of guys you don’t invite to a party unless you know for a fact that you’re not on their shitlist.”

Richard chuckled softly. “I ran patrols and deep strike missions with the Sarge, Lieutenant. If I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t on her shitlist, I wouldn’t want to be on the same goddamned
planet
, never mind at the same party.”

Chisholm just shrugged this time. He didn’t know Aida personally and was sure she was good at her job, but it was pretty clear to him that Richard didn’t really get what he was talking about. He’d met a fair few operators since he’d signed up, and there was just no way some teacher, even one wearing a green beret, held a candle to the guys he was thinking about.

When night fell, Sorilla found herself perched about twenty meters over the jungle floor with the local patrol setting up camp a quarter kilometer away. She had line of sight on them from her position, but it had been a long day and it was shaping up to be a longer night.

She tossed a strap over one of the thick branches above her then clipped a quick release clamp to her armor’s shoulder and let herself hang in place. With her armor set to monitor the local area using passive systems, she settled in to get a little shuteye while she could.

Out there, somewhere in the Hayden jungle, she was pretty sure that the rest of her team would be doing much the same. They hadn’t had any contact in hours, but that wasn’t surprising. They were all good operators, so she knew they’d kept up fine, and when the time came, they’d be where they needed to be.

Bird dogging a patrol was tedious work: long hours of following your own people while working like hell to keep them from knowing you were there, all the while knowing that the odds were that some of them were going to die before you could do anything, even if it all went according to plan. At the end of the tedium, there would be terror and rage and sorrow, and though she could see it all coming, there wasn’t a damned thing Sorilla could to that would stop it.

Some days you got to be the rescuing hero, some days you had to settle for the avenging angel.

*****

USF Cheyenne, Taskforce Five

Outer Hayden System

Admiral Nadine Brookes was quietly reading over deployment maps and charts of the local system when Denise pulled herself into the room without signaling. Nadine looked up, surprised at that. Denise was the only person on the ship who’d even think of doing that, but even she wouldn’t barge in on a whim.

“Yes?”

“Accelerometers registered a gravity event, ma’am.”

Nadine slapped the folder shut on the pad with the maps, automatically strapping it down so it wouldn’t fly around, and she then slipped clear of her own light straps and pushed off. “With me.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

Nadine swung through the bulkhead door and kicked off the corner, flying up to the admiralty deck, where she immediately dropped into her station and strapped in. “Report.”

“Not much yet, ma’am,” Ensign Colbert, one of her staff, replied without looking up. “The gravity event was very small, or very far away, but it was most likely a non-natural event, ma’am.”

“Valve use? Or incoming jump?”

“Signature is consistent with a jump, ma’am, what little we’ve got. We’re coordinating with the rest of the squadron now, triangulating and layering the data to get a higher resolution.”

“So,” Nadine said softly, eyes on the system charts open across her screens. “They’re here then.”

“Looks that way, Admiral,” Denise said softly.

Nadine glanced at the squadron status and noticed that they were still as she’d left them when she retired to her cabin earlier. VASIMR drives were powered down as the ships floated near the Trojan point of one of the system’s outer worlds.

While not quite the mass of a gas giant, the huge “super-Earth” class planet was big enough to have stabilized some of the system’s asteroids into two points near its orbit. They’d parked the fleet there, because it was within range of two of Hayden’s three most stable jump points while still remaining within reasonable strike range of Hayden itself.

With their drives down and communications link limited to laser coms, they were about as invisible as they could be. Even if the enemy had space-time gravity detection systems, as most researchers on Earth believed, the taskforce was parked amid a substantial asteroid field.

They can probably see us on those systems, but our hulls are mostly nickel-iron. We
are
asteroids to anything but visual detection.

“Find them,” she said finally. “They’ll be on track for Hayden orbit and most likely coming in from the direction of the Alpha or Beta Jump Points.”

“Ma’am, we know they jump farther in-system than that.”

“Yeah, they, but even if they play with gravity better than we can, they have to have some limits,” she said. “Previous tracks showed that they were still using the same jump points we use, Denise. They just can warp space in a much larger radius than us. Focus on direct and ballistic trajectories from Alpha and Beta to Hayden.”

“Aye, ma’am, I’ll pass those orders along.”

“And bring the squadron to general quarters,” Nadine said grimly. “But do it very, very quietly. We’re hunting aliens tonight.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

*****

“Oh, motherless void.”

Patrick considered reprimanding the ensign who’d cursed, but honestly, he had a few more colored phrases in mind, himself. They’d located the enemy ships, right on the track the admiral predicted, but they hadn’t expected what they’d found.

“Count is up to fifteen of the expected class starships, plus three of the new type.”

Aye, yes.
Patrick examined the screen. 
The new type.

The new ships massed twice the first class and easily kept pace with the rest of the flotilla they were watching, despite them being tracked at 150 gravities’ acceleration as they came into the system. He watched the track for a few more seconds, trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing.

What the hell do we do about this?

“Captain…sir, we need to…”

“Yes, I know.” He shook himself to try and break the feeling then turned and keyed a channel to the admiral. “Ma’am. If you want to intercept, we have to act within the next few minutes.”

There was a long silence from the admiral’s deck.

“Ma’am,” he said again, softly. “They’ll slip past us and get to Hayden if we don’t…”

“I am aware of that, Captain,” she finally cut him off. “Have all ships adjust profiles to intercept.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Do this
quietly
, Captain,” she stressed harshly. “We get one shot at this, if we’re damned lucky.”

“Copy that, Admiral,” Patrick said tersely. “I know my job, ma’am.”

“Go to it then, Captain.”

“Wilco.” Patrick closed the channel, turning his focus to his bridge crew.“Helm, thrusters only! Make our heading four three niner, mark five to the negative three!”

“Aye, sir! Making heading four three niner, mark five to the negative three!”

“Coms! Send to all squadron ships!”

“Squadron channel open.”

“All ships, all ships, stand by for vector and maneuvering directions,” Patrick belted out. “Orders are to remain at maximum stealth. Do not deviate from these directions. Collier ships are to remain on-station until action is completed and either rendezvous after…or leave the system with all due haste. Copy and confirm.”

He slipped his straps, kicking out of the chair even as the thrusters continued to twist the Cheyenne around, and clumsily made his way over to the flight suit locker located nearby. “Close squadcom.”

“Squadron com closed.”

“Open ship-wide.”

“Ship-wide open.”

Patrick pulled a flight suit out of the locker. “All hands, all hands, this is the captain. We are preparing to engage an enemy squadron. Flight maneuvering at high-gravity acceleration is expected. All hands are ordered to suit up and strap down. Vacation is over, ladies and gentlemen. Time to put on the monkey suits. That is all.”

“Com closed.”

Patrick pulled his suit closed and tightened the straps around his legs, arms, and body so the suit could do its job. The Cheyenne’s thrusters retro-fired then, causing him to catch himself against the bulkhead before being tossed around, then microgravity was restored and he looked around.

“You heard me, people. Suit up.”

*****

“Is this the right move?” Nadine asked softly, enough that no one could have heard her.

No one except Denise Milan, who was approaching from behind her station. Denise leaned over her, close enough to whisper without attracting attention.

“Ma’am?”

“If we lose Taskforce Five, Earth doesn’t have a lot left.” Nadine leaned back, barely moving her lips.

“If these ships slip through unchallenged, we lose Hayden,” Denise reminded her, playing the advocate role.

“I know that,” Nadine replied. “So now I have to balance the survival of this squadron against the war effort and Hayden’s continued value. If these pieces of
filth
would just talk to us, I’d surrender Hayden to them in exchange for opening a dialogue. It’s not that valuable a planet.”

“It is to them,” Denise countered quietly. “And we need time.”

Nadine sighed softly, nodding. “You’re right. You always are, aren’t you Denise?”

“I do try, Admiral.” The raven haired woman smiled, her expression melancholy.

She knew that she’d just talked her admiral into committing the squadron, including the ship she was sitting on, to a battle they very possibly could not win. Oh, that wasn’t exactly true. The admiral had already made the decision; she just helped her feel better about it. It still sucked, however.

Denise stepped back, finished tightening the straps on her flight suit, and slid down into her station. It was strange, to be honest. When she’d joined the USF, she had thought she’d prepared herself for pretty much everything she could think of in terms of ways she could die. Strangling in the vacuum of space, burning up on entry to some alien world’s atmosphere, even being eaten by some creature like those that inhabited Hayden…all of those had crossed her mind.

Being compressed into a point of space so small you’d need an electron microscope to see it, then being converted to energy and expanding gasses by an alien super-weapon?

Well, that hadn’t really crossed her mind.

Nonetheless, as she strapped herself in, Denise couldn’t find it in her to regret her decision. One way or another, this was where the future was being decided. History in its purest form.

“All ships have maneuvered to new heading,” Colbert announced, distracting them both. “Captain Rogers is requesting the green light.”

Nadine nodded. “The light is green.”

“Aye, ma’am. The light is green”

Just instants after she gave the order, the Cheyenne’s VASIMR drive rumbled to life, and they were pushed back hard into their acceleration bolsters as the squadron moved out of its position amid the asteroids and headed to intercept their target. The deck was soon filled with the gasping grunts of people clenching their abdomens and using their breathing to force blood from their extremities to their brains.

Nadine pulled her repeater closer, eyes carefully watching the twin tracks of her squadron and the aliens. The success of her maneuver here would depend entirely on being able to hide the radioactive thrust of the VASIMR drives from the enemy ships for as long as was humanely possible.

That meant that they had to get tricky.

She’d timed the green light order close, but they were accelerating into the super-Earth as hard and fast as they could. At better than ten gravities’ acceleration, they’d normally stand out like roman candles in the night, but the enemy squadron was directly ahead of them and on the other side of the planet. Their drives were aimed directly away, and like lasers, the plume of a VASIMR drive was very directional. With the planet to cover any bleed, they should still be entirely invisible as they prepared to slingshot around the super-Earth.

The alien squadron was still a lot farther out than Taskforce Five, but they were building velocity at insane levels. TFF had the inside track, but the engagement window was going to be tight and there would be no second chances. If they didn’t pull off the strike with near perfection, the aliens would annihilate them as they passed…or, barring that, pick them off later at their leisure.

“Time to intercept…” Colbert said through clenched teeth. “Twelve hours, eighteen minutes, thirty-eight seconds…we’ll engage them in Hayden orbit.”

Damn, but this is cutting things close.

*****

Jungle north of FOB

Hayden

Sorilla woke an hour before local sunrise, her HUD flashing to life and bringing her out of her semi-sleep with quiet but quick efficiency. She instantly checked on the patrol but found them in the same place they’d been the night before.

They were bunked out in the camp they’d cut out of the jungle. She easily picked their sentries out of the foliage, with no signs of moving just yet. The jungle was as dark as it got, no hint of the breaking dawn visible yet as Sorilla unstrapped and queried her computer on why it woke her.