Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (11 page)

*****

The roar that went up across the bridge was echoed through the ship as the word was passed, but Captain Jane MacKay kept her eyes on the screens as the light of the nuclear fire filtered back to their scopes. They’d struck all three, but each of the submunitions was smaller than the larger warheads earlier engagements had used, so until she saw them die in her scopes, she wasn’t going to count them down.

“Rail cannons! Status!” she snapped, startling the people around her back to their jobs.

“Capacitors charged, ma’am, cannons primed and loaded.”

“Time to torpedo reload?”

“Thirty seconds, Captain. We need to shift weapons from stores to the magazines.”

She nodded, having expected as much. “Signal the Cheyenne. HMS Hood is passing the ball.”

“Aye, ma’am. Signaling the Cheyenne.”

Behind and to the portside of the HMS Hood, the USF Cheyenne acknowledged the signal and accelerated ahead of its cohort. As the Hood pulled back, the Cheyenne took its place as lead cohort

“Cheyenne is firing, ma’am.”

MacKay nodded absently, eyes on the accelerometer display. The Cheyenne would shoulder its fair share of the assault, she had no doubt. Her job right now was to watch the gravity display and stand ready to warn the Cheyenne while its accelerometers were being thrown around by the recoil of its own torpedoes.

The second salvo of torpedoes slammed away from the squadron, the weapons crossing much lesser distance in much, much lesser time. This time, the alien counterattack came faster and led the weapons more. The flashes of nuclear fire erupting in space between them served notice that the second barrage was markedly less successful than the first.

MacKay hissed her displeasure. “Damn, they learn fast. Standby the rail guns!”

“Rail guns standing by!”

“We’re going to interlace our lines incredibly fast,” she snapped. “I want all cannons linked to computer control. Have them fire as we bear!”

“Aye, ma’am, linking firing orders now.”

“Gravity event!”

MacKay didn’t have time to issue an order this time; the HMS Hood slammed her hard into her bolster as emergency acceleration kicked in automatically, clawing the ship away from the detected warping of space-time. She panted desperately as she tried to keep from blacking out, working with the compressive material of her flight suit to try and keep blood pressure within operating levels in her brain.

Around her, the rest of the bridge crew and, she knew, the entire ship were doing the same under the oppressive twelve-gravity slam the ship had smashed them with. Clenched teeth, hissed panting, and grunting sounds were the only thing she heard other than the emergency alarms, until the Hood suddenly shook like some giant had picked it up and rattled them around to see what might be hidden inside the funny-looking package.

Then the acceleration cut out, and MacKay took a deep breath as her lungs screamed for oxygen.

“Report!” she called out, gasping.

“We just lost the Shilo Warrior and the Sherwood Forest, ma’am.”

MacKay closed her eyes, face setting in stone. “Bring our guns to bear and open fire.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

The HMS Hood’s thrusters flared in conjunction with its control moment gyroscopes to bring their bow about. The instant the computers determined that the ship had borne into the firing solution for her rail cannons, the big capacitor driving magnetic accelerators opened fire on full automatic.

One hundred-kilogram carbon steel bars erupted from the Hood’s cannon ports with enough force to shake the big ship from stem to stern, exploding into space at better than half the speed of light. Only the counter thrust of the finely controlled VASIMR drive kept the guns themselves from throwing the big ship backwards. Given the closing speed of the opposing fleets, they slammed into the alien ships only seconds later and sent plumes of explosive gases erupting from the big ships.

MacKay and her crew were slammed into their seats as the Hood pivoted under them, keeping its gun ports locked as it continued to empty its magazines and drain the ship’s reactors and capacitors.

“They’re past us!”

“Watch for their turn!” MacKay ordered. “We can’t lose the track when they come around, even for a second, or we’re
dead
!”

“One ship down! Acceleration dead!”

MacKay snarled, showing teeth in her satisfaction. The amount of force they’d poured into those ships would have glassed entire continents, but she’d take one victory if that was all that was being offered.

“Captain! They’re not shifting course!”

“What?” MacKay demanded, calling up the plot on her repeater display.

Sure enough, the crewman was right. The ships were barreling on and clearly heading for the outer system. MacKay frowned for a second then suddenly cursed.

“Torpedoes!” she snarled. “Rapid fire, wide spread! All tubes!
Fire
!”

“Firing!”

The HMS Hood again led the squadron, opening firing with all tubes into the aft side of the fleeing ships. With their damage, the aliens couldn’t outrun the torpedoes’ acceleration, but they were now moving
away
from the squadron and had already built significant speed. So, while the torpedoes from the Hood and the other ships that joined in were overtaking them, they were too slow, and the aliens’ point defense systems easily picked them off.

“Damnation,” MacKay hissed, shaking her head. “Cease fire. Open a channel to the Cheyenne.”

“Aye, ma’am. All tubes, cease fire.”

“Captain Roberts is waiting, ma’am.”

MacKay turned to the com channel, hoping she was wrong about what she was seeing but figuring she wasn’t that lucky.

*****

USF Cheyenne

“I agree, Captain,” Patrick said tiredly as he spoke with Jane MacKay. “They’re running.”

“We hit them hard, took them by surprise. If they escape this system…” MacKay shook her head. “We’ll not do that again, not this way.”

“I know, but we just don’t have the overtake to catch them. Not if we want to live to actually do anything.” He sighed, eyes on the plot of the ship that was no longer accelerating. “I’m dispatching ships to pull that hulk into tow. When our auxiliary ships arrive, we’ll tear it down of anything that looks salvageable. Maybe we’ll get lucky this time and get enough of the drive intact to make sense of it.”

“Aye, sir.” MacKay nodded. “The Hood volunteers to reel it in.”

“Once we’ve confirmed that they’ve jumped clear, go to it. Take the Shil…” Patrick closed his eyes. “Take the squadron with you. I’ll take the Locksley and go check on the colony.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Chapter Four

Outer Hayden System

What humankind referred to as jump space wasn’t really anything of the kind. It was, in fact, an absence of space. The universe, in totality, wasn’t infinite in either space or time, though there was significant discussion on whether that held true in the other known dimensions. The laws of physics as they applied in Einsteinian space were tied directly into space-time itself, so the advantage of “jump space” was in completely leaving those laws behind along with the rest of the universe.

For a ship, punching out of space-time was really only possible at places where gravity waves intersected to level space-time to almost perfectly cancel gravity out entirely. In normal space-time, no matter where you went in the entire universe, you were never in true zero gravity. The correct term was microgravity, the warping of space-time by any mass within the universe. Jump points were small segments of space time where microgravity itself was almost entirely negated, opening the door to actually leaving the material universe and entering…the true void.

Coming back, that was both easier and more complicated at the same time. Easier because nature abhors a vacuum, and matter wants to be in contact with matter. Similar to water droplets absorbing one another, all you had to do was bring your ship close enough to “real space” and it would be sucked back. It was more complicated, because without a jump point to act as a beacon of sorts, it was extremely difficult to determine where you were reentering space-time. Plus, if you entered too deeply into a gravity well, the shock could shake you back to your component atoms.

For human ships, despite the cast-iron construction of their hulls and advanced composites of their armor, reentering space-time anywhere but a jump point was nearly suicidal.

The same didn’t hold true for a species with a higher mastery over gravity field generation.

Deep in Hayden’s outer system, well within the heliosphere, a gravetic pulse temporarily collapsed space-time. The solar wind and local particles were blown back by the pulse just long enough for the ship to arrive.

Compared to previously encountered ships, this one was small. Barely a third the mass of the cruisers that were responsible for the destruction of Taskforces Three and Four, and putting out a EM silhouette less than a tenth of those ships. It barely paused upon reentering space-time before angling for Hayden’s World and immediately accelerating to 300 gravities.

Within minutes, it crossed the system and decelerated into Hayden orbit, assuming a geosynchronous plot over the secondary alien base. The ship paused there for a time then shifted orbit back to the primary continent and settled into place directly over the former colony of Hayden itself. Then it slowly dropped from orbit and landed in the jungles 300 kilometers northeast of the colony site.

*****

Hayden’s World

USF underground military bunker

“Report came back from the overseas units,” Lt. Commander Rivers said as he walked into the briefing room. “The aliens have gotten a perimeter defense set up, lot like they had at the colony site here, according to reports. It’s tough, but we can break it down as long as they don’t get the valve online again.”

General Kayne nodded. “Good. We’re going to have to shift at least a third of our troops over there to supplement the current group. Do we have enough to ferry that many people?”

Rivers shook his head. “No way, sir. We lost too many air units when the valve came online originally. Sir, I know this is a bit off the wall, but what about naval units?”

“Naval units? Son, have you picked up some weird alien jungle fever?”

“Hear me out, General,” Rivers said with a hand up to ward off the strange look the general was pinning him with. “I’ve been running a side project since we got here. May I show you, sir?”

Kayne got up, clearly curious. “Something tells me you’d better.”

Rivers guided him down to the exit of the underground facility, where it opened up overlooking the ocean to the east and then down to the edge of the river mouth that lay south of them. “Right there, sir.”

“How in the hell did you get anything like that built?” Kayne asked as they approached a camo-covered building that was hanging out over the river. Inside was a surprisingly large boat, floating serenely in the easy current.

“We needed transport, and it was pretty obvious that it’d be a while before we got anymore from Earth, sir,” Rivers said. “And we have some skilled hands here sitting around doing very little, so I requisitioned some of the civilians’ time and pulled the data from the historical banks. We’ve had a few fits and starts, but I think we’ve got it figured out.”

The general eyed the masts on the boat warily. “You’re not planning on using sails are you?”

“No, sir,” Rivers chuckled. “Just wanted somewhere to put the com gear. We fabbed twin engines for this baby. They’ve got a four-day charge and enough solar gear to prime them again in about a week. We can build another three like this in a few weeks, General. That’ll be enough to move men anywhere we need them, as long as we’re careful about the weather.”

Kayne nodded. “I like it. Get it done, Commander.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kayne shook his head as he left the boathouse, surprised but certainly not displeased with the initiative displayed by the commander. He honestly wouldn’t have thought of seafaring himself; most of his experience involved flying from one AO to another. The last time he was on a ship was his honeymoon, the third one.

Being effectively cut off from resupply was certainly keeping things interesting. As far as Kayne was aware, no one on Earth had fought a war like this in better than a century, no one from any first world nation, certainly. On Earth, you were never further away from resupply than an overnight airdrop. Trying to fight any enemy that had global presence was tough enough, but doing it with extremely limited supplies and
without
airstrips, orbital access, and straight up air superiority was just plain screwing with him.

Kayne paused before going back into the underground bunker they’d dug out, eyeing the sky thoughtfully.

The sun was going down, and if he shut his brain off a bit, he could almost believe that he was working out of Panama again, or perhaps somewhere in Africa, the deep reds and oranges of the sunset turning the green jungle black as the shadows began to draw across the land.

Even the sounds were similar, at least at first. Insects were insects, in Kayne’s experience, and there were only so many ways the little buggers could make sounds, so the buzzing and chirping of crickets or whatever the locals called them was dead on. It wasn’t until the call of a predator echoed out of the jungle that a shiver went down his spine. Something about the timber of the larger beasties’ roars just didn’t sit right with him, likely because he couldn’t place the sound and that bugged the crap out of him all on its own.

Kayne turned his back on the setting sun and walked down and around into the entryway to the bunker. He had work to do, and listening to the jungle wasn’t getting it done.

*****

“We’re not going to make base camp tonight.”

Jerry Reed sighed but nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Dean, I know.”

He’d told the soldiers that if they didn’t keep up the pace, they’d be stuck out in the jungle an extra night. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many jungle men in the lot, and certainly none to equal the Sarge. Between tripping over roots and stumps, or having to be hauled out of standing water where the Kaeroptis were breeding, Jerry was having flashbacks to escorting students around the jungle on day passes.