The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (28 page)

“Titans, report to your launch positions.”

The order made things official. Sorilla reached out and touched the switch that closed the cockpit hatch and sealed her inside the eighty-ton war machine. Hydraulics lifted her seat from the angled position to vertical, sealing the armored back behind her, and the screens all lit up.

“By the numbers, Titans,” she said. “First squad with me. Second, to your positions.”

The lumbering beasts moved out, the decks vibrating with the pounding of metal on metal as the Titans walked over to the electromagnetic launchers designed to move cargo to orbital installations. They’d been retrofitted with large sabots for each Titan, and Sorilla’s was waiting for her as she guided her machine into place using the manual controls.

Men swarmed over her Titan, locking her in place and checking her gear one last time.

“All clear, Lieutenant!” The crew chief flashed her a thumbs up. “Happy hunting!”

Sorilla sank into the neural interface long enough to give him a thumbs up about as thick as a telephone pole, then settled into her launch position as she waited for the green light or the call to cancel the mission.

It was out of her hands now.

That was a sensation she didn’t like in the slightest.

Ugh. How to fighter jocks do this? Give me a nice thick jungle to stick and fade from any day.

*****

On the bridge, Roberts looked out over the three-dimensional displays that showed the system before him. His own ships and the enemy were represented by icons; the zoom was immeasurably too far out for them to be shown in anything resembling visible scale. The alien ships were visible now, showing up on light-speed scanners as well as the gravity detection traps, and while they wouldn’t be certain for over an hour, it seemed that they were just as interested in meeting Valkyrie as Valkyrie was in meeting them.

More aggressive than usual. I wonder if we’re dealing with the same class of enemy, or have they finally brought up their military arm?

He had mixed feelings about that idea, to be frank. On the one hand, he didn’t much like the idea of blowing even armed civilians to the depths. Fighting wasn’t supposed to involve civilians, that was why they were called civilians. On the other hand, however and of course, he was justly frightened by just how much more advanced the aliens’ true military technology was.

Earlier interactions with them were clearly limited, both sides holding back for reasons neither may have truly been able to understand. Now TF-V had new ships, new tricks, and a whole new place…but the enemy had time to adapt and come up with their own tricks and plans, and those ships out there certainly didn’t match the configuration of the vessels that had annihilated The Los Angeles task group over Hayden.

“Steady on course,” he ordered. “Make certain that the gravity pulse devices are prepared to fire, and have all stations do full diagnostics. We have a short while before this fight gets down and dirty, let’s be ready for it.”

“Aye, sir.”

*****

Even to their allies, the Ross’El were an inscrutable species.

They didn’t communicate directly with anyone, choosing…or perhaps requiring, a complicated exchange of mathematical models of space-time in the place of what most might consider a language. It made any sort of empathy with them, or from them, all but impossible, even to those that dealt with them regularly.

Those who did do so were quick to point out that dealing with them regularly actually
ensured
a distinct lack of empathy, but few believed them.

For the Ross, it was perhaps a lonely existence in some ways, but a heady one indeed in others.

As many suspected, once upon a very long time in the past, they had been a very normal iteration of sentience. Bipedal, interacting with other species like themselves, and intelligent.

So incredibly intelligent.

Evolution was a powerful thing, however, and intelligence was both a matter of context and perspective.

After thousands of years, the Ross’El had become something far different than they begun as, something that their own ancestors would not recognize any more than their supposed allies did. Having delved more deeply into the universe than any species they, or anyone known, had ever encountered, the Ross were well aware that they had little in common with those who remained fully embedded in the four dimensions through which most species experienced space and time.

They no longer cared, however.

Their motivations were their own, and the Ross brooked no interference with their societal quest. Those who interfered, such as the species they now faced, had to accept that annihilation was their final reward.

Insects did not get a vote on whether they were stepped on.

The two bulbous Ross’El warships and their support fleet accelerated toward the signature of technology they knew had been stolen from them.

There would be no thought to mercy, nor a request for same. Total war had been declared.

*****

Admiral Brooke eyed the incoming data as the resolution was constantly improved with the influx of photons across their sensors. The two biggest ships were of a type they didn’t have on their files, which probably made them heavy hitters.

Their signature was clearly Ghoulie, however, so they were targets and there was no doubt about that. The support ships in the enemy formation were more recognizable, including a few of the lighter enemy warships. She picked one out, a lead ship that was clearly screening for the main element of the force, and haloed it in her interface.

“Tag. You win,” she whispered before looking up. “Send these coordinates to the Titans, this is their target.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Be sure that the captains knows not to open fire on this ship,” she added. “It would royally suck to fail in our mission because of a blue-on-blue strike.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She returned her eyes to the map, mostly empty space in a radiation-blasted system that was of no value to either of them. It was perhaps ironic to fight here, but to her mind, it was a better place to decide a battle than over an inhabited world.

No temptations here, boys. Just you, and us.

“Range closing, ma’am. We’ll be in extreme weapons range shortly.”

“Understood. Inform the Titans, they may launch at their discretion,” Brooke ordered, “Valkyrie will provide cover.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

*****

“Titans, be advised. You have clearance to launch. Say again, Titans, you are cleared for launch. Lieutenant, the guns are yours.”

First time I’ve ever fired a gun while sitting in the barrel,
Sorilla griped to herself as she nudged open the com. “Roger that, Legendary. All Titans, I need a go/no-go for launch.”

The others in her team chimed in one by one, calling out that systems were green and they were all go for launch. Sorilla nodded, listening with part of her mind while she focused on the target ship that had been sent to her systems. It was of the type they had the most familiarity with, as they’d captured one more intact than anything else they’d had a look at to date. With luck they’d be able to find their way around when and if they made it on board.

“Clamps disengaged. Ready to launch.”

Sorilla twitched slightly in the cockpit of the bot. The vibrations of the hydraulic clamps unlatching had left her feeling just a little anxious, not that she was going to let anyone know.

“Roger that, Legendary. Titans are go for launch,” she replied to the controller, reaching over to flip a switch above the HUD of the big mech suit.

Technically she didn’t have to do that, the entire thing could be run from her implants, but like the others on her team, she’d learned early on that the longer you stayed deep the more mentally exhausted you became. There was a limit to how long a human could stay in synch with a machine, and none of them needed to be blowing off time now that they might need later.

“Titans,” she called over the squad channel, “confirm all systems green and check your system diagnostics.”

The twelve members of her assault squad came back by the numbers, confirming that they were standing by and ready to launch.

“Titans,” the launch controller’s voice came over their squad channel, “give over gravetics control to Legendary.”

That was the part Sorilla hated, but she flipped the switch and handed control of her Titan’s gravity system to the launch controller of the Legendary. She felt the system hum into action, and she was slammed into her seat hard for a moment as the rear generator powered up faster than the forward system. It was only a second or two under twenty Gees, but it was enough for her to grimace and bite back a curse before it evened out.

“Son of a bitch, I hate that shit.”

“Shut it, Frank.” Sorilla cut off the bellyaching before it could start. “No transcoms from here out. Lasers or inductive coms only. Confirm.”

The other Titans confirmed, some more reluctantly than others, but there were no complaints. They were about to launch into the middle of a warzone on what was possibly the most dangerous mission of the entire conflict; they didn’t need to be making any mistakes.

“Legendary, you have the Titans.”

“Roger, Titans. Standby, we’re going to clear the road.”

There was a distant shuddering in the ship that she recognized as the weapons firing, and Sorilla steeled herself.

“Titans…go!” Sorrilla ordered, pulling the trigger on the launcher as she did.

There was a topsy-turvy feeling of riding a roller coaster as she was slammed back into her seat, then forward, and up then down. The HUD blurred in front of her as she was rapidly accelerated out at one hundred Gees then spit into the black of space.

Never wanted to feel what a bullet felt like before. Lucky me, I got my non-wish.

Her Titan exploded out into space, leading the pack by fractions of a second. Beyond the lights of the Legendary she could see the running lights of the other ships of Valkyrie, and beyond those lay the enemy. As soon as she was clear and no longer accelerating, Sorilla felt microgravity return as her core was shut down to prevent the enemy from tracking her.

Now we see if the eggheads were right, or if we’re paste in a tin can.

USV America

The America and her cohort had completed the trip they’d set out to make, slipping as quietly as they could into the system that the Terra and The Canadian had jumped into weeks earlier. Taking the long road around had been…well, long but necessary. None of them knew just how long the disruption of space-time would last, or what the long-term consequences would be to employing the disruptors used to shut the direct door to Hayden.

The sensors of the small flotilla of Task Force Seven were immediately assaulted by light-speed data that sent alarms blaring across every deck of every ship while men and women struggled to get everything back in order after the jump.

“What the hell is going on!?” Captain Pete Green snarled, his head splitting from the jump, so the sound was distinctly unwelcome.

“Multiple contacts in system, Captain! Thirty…forty…more individual signals, sir! It’s the enemy fleet!”

“Shit,” Green hissed as quietly as he could manage.

He called up the data himself and found his worst fears confirmed. Ship counts were still climbing, and it was clear that it had to be nearly the combined fleet strength reported by the Sadler. Something caught his eye quickly, though, and he made a fast calculation before smiling a particularly sick looking smile.

“They’re already gone,” he said aloud.

“Sir?”

“The fleet, it’s already jumped on from here,” he said. “Look to the acceleration vectors, they were moving into jump positions almost twelve hours ago.”

That brought a mixed reaction from the crew, much as it had himself. That the fleet was gone was a relief, but it also meant that that massive mass of ships was heading for Hayden and human-controlled space.

They still left a few behind, however.
He shifted his gaze to the stationary ships on the telemetry plot.

A handful of enemy ships and…one USV Terra.

Looks intact too. Mostly.

“Jeremy.” He nodded to an ensign nearby.

“Yes, sir?”

“Please inform Major Washington that I want a moment of his time, if you please.”

“Aye, sir.” The ensign nodded, leaving the bridge at a fast walk.

“If you please” was command code phrasing for “right the fuck now,” and the ensign clearly knew it. Green smiled slightly, eyes returning to the still-improving telemetry plot.

This is not going to be easy. They have enough ships to make it a stand-up fight, but they’ve also got the Terra in their range. We need get closer, see if the crew is still alive. Damn it, this just got way too complicated.

*****

Washington stepped onto the bridge of the America, waiting just at the edge of the captain’s line of site to be called in. Green noticed him quickly and waved him in. “Please, Major, come over here.”

“Captain,” he said, nodding as he stepped over to the three-dimensional display the captain was pouring over.

At the center of it were several ships he recognized as alien in nature, the warships they’d brought against Hayden in the past, but also one that he noted was most certainly
not
alien at all.

“The Terra, sir? Is she intact?”

“Mostly, Major,” Green told him. “I’ve conferred with the admiral on this and we’re going to risk ourselves a bit and try to get in close enough to determine if the crew are still alive.”

“And if they aren’t?”

“Then we take out the Terra as a first strike target,” Green said coldly. “If we don’t succeed with the rest of the alien ships, I don’t want them to be able to learn anything more from the Terra.”

Washington nodded. “What if the crew are alive?”

“That’s when things get rougher,” Green sighed. “We’ll try to plot a rescue, which is where your team comes in. We’d need you to infiltrate the Terra, establish a beachhead for our Marine forces, and try to free as many of the crew as you can.”