The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (13 page)

*****

USV
Terra

“We can’t take much more of this, Captain!”

Pierce was loathe to agree with that assessment, but there was little doubt that the Terra and the Canada were being shaken apart by the combination of the enemy weapon and their own countermeasures.

The gravity jammers twisted up space-time enough that focusing the enemy weapon became a tricky thing, almost impossible when you accounted for the movement of the ships and how hard it would be to keep the weapon focused over both time and distance. The problem was that they also played all kinds of havoc with local space-time, which meant that the Terra and Canada were being twisted every which way but loose while they were under attack by the enemy weapon.

It was better than being squashed into an infinitely small space and then being split into one’s component sub-atomic particles, but it was still going to tear the ships apart if something didn’t change.

“Impact in three seconds…two…one…”

They couldn’t see the flash of the weapon’s impact, it was still a few seconds away, but Pierce devotedly hoped that it was a particularly bright and violent flash indeed.

The Hammers were relativistic weapons, faster enough that there were few things that could stop them and fewer things that could dodge them, but until he saw the flash on his scopes, he wasn’t going to celebrate. That said, one thing that happened right around the same time as the predicted impact was the sudden cessation of the enemy gravity assault.

That was good enough, so that when the flash confirmation came though, it was something of a letdown.

“Good hit!”

“Signal the Canada,” Pierce ordered. “Tell them all weapons free and follow us through.”

“Aye aye, sir! Signal sent to the Canada. They confirm, will follow us through.”

With the enemy’s main weapon being, for the moment, neutralized, they just had to punch through the enemy formation. Beyond lay the planet they would need to make their escape.

*****

The two human ships tightened their formation, skimming within kilometers of each other as they dove in on the enemy ships. The two hulking Ghoulie ships seemed to pay them little mind, not changing their course in the slightest, though both were now spewing atmosphere and fires from where they had been struck by the Hammers.

The smaller interceptors, however, reacted instantly as they accelerated in to a strike formation that would be familiar to many pilots from Terran wars long past.

It was going to be a fast interception pass; both sides would only get one chance to make their arguments, so to speak. In space, however, one chance was generally all you needed.

On the Terra and the Canada, the point defense weapons whirred into position. Now that the two groups were far too close to hope to engage with each other’s standoff weapons, it would be down to what they packed for knife-range encounters.

*****

“Here they come!”

The enemy interceptors were a fraction the size of the Terra, but clearly capable of matching her speed and still having a little left in the tank. They were actually
decelerating
relative to the Terra and the Canada as they made their pass, however, burning hard along a matching course with the human ships in order to extend the engagement time.

Pierce had to give them credit for guts, because he was sure this was going to be at least as ugly as passing engagement for them as it was for the Terra.

“Target and open fire with lasers and mid-range cannons,” he ordered. “Standby interception rockets for point defense.”

“Aye, sir, engaging with lasers and cannons.”

The Terra and the Canada, both ships still pouring on the acceleration as they aimed to blow through the blockade of ships, opened fire on the smaller interceptors. Lasers and deck-mounted Metalstorm cannons swung to life, the lack of sound from both more than a little creepy to those watching on the bridge, and spat their respective payloads out into the void.

High-energy photons, slugs of depleted uranium, and magnetically contained plasma arcs crossed one another in the vacuum at high speed then proceeded on to tear into their particular targets.

Human conventional weapons were crude in many ways, but then, if someone is swinging a club at your head, it could easily be just as effective as the most sophisticated weapon in the world.

Gigawatt lasers vaporized chunks of armor, turning the material to plasma in a sublimation process that took fractions of a fraction of a second. The resulting plume of superheated material erupted from its source and exploded into space in a violent display of pyrotechnics.

Depleted uranium rounds moving at significant portions of the speed of light, relative to their targets, were not significant threats to a starship. Not individually. Ten thousand of them slamming into armor, chipping away at it until it was gone and they were tearing through the softer frame underneath? That was a completely different story.

Metalstorm weapons shredded their targets, pulverizing armor that could block a single high-velocity strike with ease, actually targeted at the areas the lasers had already struck and tore through the enemy ships to ricochet around the interior like thousands of insane pool balls in a three-dimensional table.

On the other side of the equation, however, the human ships weren’t getting away completely clean either.

The first plasma arcs rained down on the Terra as the big ship cleaved the lead path, slamming into ceramic armor actually designed to stop very similar weapon concepts. The active armor sandwich that the Terra was plated in had thick heat-resistant ceramics sandwiching-shaped high-explosive cores. When the outer shell of armor was cracked by a plasma arc, the explosive would detonate and throw out a plasma jet of its own to disrupt and diffuse the incoming weapon.

Tested and proven, the active armor had been developed for tanks shortly after the Second World War and had been refined ever since. Unfortunately, as sophisticated and powerful as it was, the enemy weapons were far beyond what the designers had intended, and some of the blasts inevitably burst through.

*****

“Losing pressure on our starboard side, sections nine, forty, forty three, fifty…. Reports still coming in, Captain!”

“Get damage control on it, but don’t stop firing!” Pierce ordered. “Priority to any section with munitions magazines!”

“Aye, sir!”

On the bridge, as deep as the command center was buried in the hull of the ship, they barely felt anything of the explosive impacts. Some stray vibrations made it through, occasionally the distant thunder of a panel blowing, but by and large Pierce was disturbed more by the lack of sounds of violence than he ever had been in command of a blue water warship.

“Bogey eight and nine are down!”

“Five is losing acceleration! They’ve ceased firing!”

“Hammer magazines reloaded!”

Pierce leaned forward. “Lock up the Ghoulie ships and fire as she bears!”

“Aye aye, Captain. Firing as she bears!”

The bridge was a scene of order on the razor’s edge of chaos, held in check from an inevitable decent into total entropy only by the skill and training of the people manning the stations, and for Pierce it was home sweet home.

The ship did shudder from the magnetic launches of the Hammers, which felt wrong to him when he could barely feel strikes that were killing members of his crew, but the distinct low thrum of the launchers felt good. It felt like a victory condition.

*****

Parath hissed softly as he watched signal feeds blink out as one interceptor after another was destroyed or damaged beyond function. Somehow the two alien ships had negated the standoff weapons in use by the Ross, and the interceptors that were fast enough for him to send ahead were armed only with light weapons. Against the hulking battle vessels the aliens were fielding, it was like watching chits assault a full grown adult with pebbles.

Unfortunately, it was clear that the enemy ships had no intentions of slowing, and at their current rate, they would explode past the Ross blockade in mere moments, and from there nothing was left to stop them from their goal.

If he were right, they would immediately sling in close to the planet and from there boost around and use the gravity to increase their angular velocity and course to send them out toward another gravity gateway. At that point it would become a chase, which was something he was
not
looking forward to. The direct path was now apparently closed, though for how long the alien method would be maintained, he wasn’t sure, which meant that his group would be forced to use the next most direct path to reach the alien empire.

Which sounds far better than it actually is, given that the second most direct path is nothing of the sort!

Tracking a hostile force across multiple star systems was a nightmare, particularly when they apparently had the capacity to match the Ross gravity weapon for gravity weapon and could somehow shut down gravity gates. It would be a violent and arduous voyage, and one in which the enemy held far too many advantages despite being outnumbered by a normally decisive amount.

Unfortunately, for all that, he wasn’t going to have a choice.

His orders from the master of fleets was clear: The enemy worlds had to be secured. Particularly the nexus world, though he wasn’t certain if that world was of as much strategic value as they had once believed. It would depend on if the disruption was permanent and, if not, then just how long it would last. He couldn’t imagine that any race could come up with something of this nature that could permanently override the natural universe in such a way, but Parath supposed it was remotely possible.

Even in the event that it wasn’t, however, until they had a better idea of just what they were dealing with, that gateway would have to remain off limits for fear of what may have been done at the far side.

He could feel the ache forming in his mind at even the
thought
of the work it would take to unravel that.

Damn the Ross to the singular abyss. This is rapidly becoming more than it could ever possibly be worth, and I foresee it only becoming more costly in the future.

Unfortunately, as he’d considered before, he had little choice.

His path was set now, and it led back to the alien empire via whatever route the mission deemed necessary.

*****

USV Terra

“We’re through!”

The Terra and the Canada blew through the two Ghoulie ships that had tried to block their advance, though thankfully not as literally as the USS Cheyenne back on in Hayden space. The Terra was tough, but Pierce could do without that particular “honor” on his record.

“Get eyeballs on the accelerometers!” he snarled. “They’ll be able to target us again once we’re outside knife range!”

That was the real risk now, though both ships under his command were spewing air and debris from the damage they’d taken. Not even the Ghoulies were crazy enough to call down a Valve strike on their own position, or as close to it as the Terra and the Canada currently were.

As that range opened up again, however, they would no longer have any such restriction on their actions.

Unfortunately, the human ships did have a major restriction on theirs. The kinetic accelerators used to launch the Hammers, the human versions of a standoff weapon, were fixed emplacements that aimed dead ahead. They’d not be able to get any return shots off, and that was all there was to that.

“Space-time normal! No sign of attack.”

That won’t last,
Pierce thought grimly, stretching slightly in his seat.

The planet ahead was looming in the screens, and with it he knew was their shot at escape. A gravity assist sling around the planet, come out with higher angular velocity and a new course that put them on target for an emergency jump to a system about eighteen light years closer in toward human space, and they’d be clear.

They just had to survive the next few minutes of the enemy’s Gravity Valve.

“Captain, I’m getting strange readings across the accelerometers,” a crewman announced, sounding uncertain as he spoke up.

“Then launch countermeasures,” Pierce said.

“No, sir, you don’t understand. It’s not a Valve strike.” The crewman shook his head, “Captain, I’m reading this as being located on the planet.”

Pierce blinked. “What?”

He got up, moving quickly over to look at the readings himself. He could have had them sent to his station, but he was a blue water captain and this felt more natural to him. What he found when he got there was perplexing, however.

The crewman was right. The waves of warping in space-time were coming from ahead of them and not the ship behind or on their own location, the way a strike would appear. Instead it looked like the gravity of the planet itself was…

“They wouldn’t…” Pierce whispered in shock.

“Sir?”

“Come about!” he screamed. “Come about! Reverse heading!”

“Sir? That will let them catch us…”

“Damn them! And damn you,” Pierce snarled at his XO as he rushed across the bridge and grabbed the shoulder of the helmsman. “Bring us about, full reverse heading, all flank thrust! Put our backs to the planet! Do it now!”

“Aye, sir!”

“Tell the Canada to do the same!” Pierce snarled. “They targeted the planet! It’s going to…”

There was a white flash across every instrument they had, and then it all went black.

“Oh hell,” Pierce said into the darkness of the bridge now that every display screen was off and only the overhead lights provided illumination. “All hands…brace for impact.”

He slumped into his seat as the alarms sounded, mind mentally counting down the time between the flash and what he knew was coming.

*****

The USV Terra swung away from the Canada, obeying its captain’s order as the planet ahead of them both simply ceased to exist for a moment and then was replaced by a blast of white the likes of which no human had ever witnessed before.

It burned out every sensor on every ship looking in that direction, and then there was the eerie darkness of artificial night.