Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (15 page)

Then one of them started in his direction, and the scientist in him fled.

He froze, the shivering abruptly stopping as he watched the…creature, thing, person…whatever-it-was amble, almost swagger, in his direction. Jerry’s eyes stayed glued to it, whatever it was, and the gun it was swinging around even as he relaxed his head back down to the ground and lay there as dead-looking as he could possibly be.

It stopped, standing over him, and he found himself staring at a pair of boots that looked like they’d been compression molded over the feet. He didn’t see any laces, straps, or even seams. The sole looked soft, but the boot itself gleamed with the sheen of hard plastic, ceramic, or maybe some sort of metal. He just couldn’t tell, really, and supposed that it didn’t actually matter, but just then the question of it wouldn’t leave him.

Weird.
The thing, soldier, whatever-it-was crouched down, pushing him over onto his back, and Jerry figured that it was now or never.

As he was thrown over, he let his hand drop to his belt and pulled the big bowie knife in a fluid motion that swept it up and across the alien’s wrists. The thing roared. Jerry didn’t know if it was surprise, pain, or if the thing was just plain pissed off, but he took it as a good sign right up until he realized that his blade had barely left a mark.

Now, Jerry didn’t have one of the military model blades like the Sarge. His didn’t run on power packs, and the edge sure as hell wasn’t monomolecular, but it was quality steel mined from the local asteroid belt. He’d had it hand-forged by a woman he knew who was no slouch with a hammer and furnace. It was as sharp as any blade had a right to be, wasn’t an animal on Hayden with a hide tough enough to turn it, but while this one was nicked enough to make it drop its weapon, Jerry was certain he’d barely scratched it.

He rolled to his knees then threw a punch from the shoulder into the alien’s abdomen, not quite able to hold back the cry of pain when he felt his wrist crack. It felt like punching a frozen slab of meat, enough give that his knuckles were probably intact, but he was pretty sure he’d fractured his wrist.

Jerry looked up as the alien looked down at him. He thought it was looking down at him, though, honestly, it didn’t seem to have any eyes to speak of. It didn’t look especially happy, however, and Jerry figured that since he was pretty much all in, there was no sense in folding the hand now. He drove up from his knees, aligning himself with the ground, and put his whole weight into the point of his blade as he drove it forward.

It sank in this time, about halfway to the hilt, before the alien grabbed his wrist and seemed to grin at him. He found himself staring at the twin rows of jagged teeth as the alien pulled his wrist back, drawing the blade out until the grey-slicked blade was held up between the two of them.

The alien grunted something at him, and Jerry felt his life flashing in the back of his mind as his wrist was easily turned around and the blade forced back on him.

Another yelled something from a distance, but Jerry didn’t know what it was saying and the one holding him didn’t seem to care. Jerry struggled, but he couldn’t hold back the immense strength of the thing as it drove his wrist, blade and all, back and into his guts.

Jerry felt the thing let him go and fell back, eyes dropping to where his own blade was deep in his abdomen, then back up to the toothy monstrosity snarling in his direction.

Well, so much for that idea.

He stumbled back, half turned, and broke for the jungle with as much speed as he could muster considering the blade digging around his insides.

*****

“By all the be-damned foreseers!” Kriss snarled as he watched the soft-skinned local turn and bolt. “Stop him!”

Three Lucians gave chase, with Kriss bringing up the rear as they raced after the wounded local. Kriss was surprised it could move this fast with a blade in its internals, let alone through terrain this rough. He signaled the rest of his squad to hold back and secure the area then continued on.

They tracked it easily; it wasn’t taking time to cover its tracks this time, but it was smaller than a Lucian and seemed more supple, slipping through areas that they had to bull through or go around.

Kriss wanted that one. It was the only one that he was sure was still living. There were questions that had to be posed, if they could break the language issue. The Alliance had ways of managing that. They weren’t always pleasant, but language was almost universal. There were very few languages in Alliance Space that couldn’t be broken in a few hours by a computer, at least not among spacefaring people. Some aboriginal species were completely incoherent and almost impossible to translate without a speaker to do the heavy lifting, so to speak, but among advanced species, languages were generally uniform.

Math and physics were universal, or at least galactic, and that meant that any sufficiently advanced species would have to build a considerably large chunk of their communications method around things most species held in common.

There were exceptions, the Ross Ell didn’t speak or make sounds. They didn’t have any concept of verbal communication, and much of the Alliance suspected that they experienced the universe with very different senses than most. Some believed that they could see the gravetic warping of the universe, which accounted for their mastery over the dimensional singularity technology, but for whatever reasons, they were effectively impossible to talk with or to.

Kriss hoped that these things weren’t another species like that.

The war with the Ross Ell had decimated dozens of star systems before any sort of communication was broached, and even then it took another small eternity before peaceable relations were established.

Kriss strongly doubted that this species was going to be anywhere near that disruptive, but even the outside possibility sent chills down his internal organs. 
Blasted Ross Ell have no idea how to fight an honorable war. Destroying planets is no way to wage a war. That’s just killing for the sake of killing.

His thoughts were pushed aside as Kriss broke into a clear area in time to see the subject of their hunt be thrown to the ground.

*****

Jerry barely held back a scream as he thudded into the rocky ground near the pond, head bouncing off the surface like a ball on a playground. His eyes crossed, vision blurred as he heard a ringing in his ears eclipse the sound of his pursuers bulling through the jungle after him. When it faded, he heard them again and twisted his head painfully about to see two come out of the jungle and stalk in his direction.

That’s it,
he figured. There was nothing left. He relaxed in place, head lolling to the side so he could see the water ripple.

The lights were beautiful, shimmering off the surface. He stared for a couple seconds, thinking about the last time he’d seen something that beautiful, until it hit him.

What light?

Jerry frowned, squinting and trying to focus. There was a luminescence in the water, and it was slowly moving.

Kaeroptis. It’s mating season.

He rolled to his feet, getting his legs under him painfully, and stumbled out into the water. He placed his feet as carefully as he could, stone to stone, always avoiding the glowing sections of the water as he ran. Behind him he heard the aliens splash through the water after him, and Jerry grinned through bloodied teeth what was possibly the single evilest and cruelest smile the normally gentle man had ever grinned.

Come and get me.

*****

Kriss chased after his troops as they surged into the water after the fleeing local, only to haul himself up short when the lead trooper, Brask, suddenly started screaming.

Screaming.

Lucians didn’t scream.

Kriss swung his gravetic bolter about, looking for the source of the attack, but saw nothing anywhere to account for the horrid sound coming from his trooper. He and the third, a trooper by the name of Ern, stared for a moment, both of them completely at a loss.

Ern started forward, intending to help his comrade, but Kriss lunged and just caught him.

“What are you doing, Deice? He must be injured severely!”

“Look to his legs.”

They looked down and their flesh crawled as they saw a strange bio-luminescence climbing up the Lucian’s leg, already starting to work on his lower torso. Below, the water was filling with grey life-fluid in a staggering amount. Kriss cast about, spotted more of the glowing form circling their position, and quickly pulled Ern back and out of the water.

“We can’t leave him!”

“He’s gone. Look to the water about us, fool!” Kriss snarled, angry at the trooper, but even angrier at himself.

One rule he knew, one rule every Sentinel was hammered with through their careers, and he’d broken it like a stupid child.

You never chased a sentient into his own environment unless you absolutely had to and you had sufficient forces to handle ten times the force you could see. Break that rule at your peril, as the poor screaming bastard in the water was now learning.

Kriss looked across the water but couldn’t see the runner any longer. He was gone, vanished into his jungle like a ghost.

“Blast,” Kriss hissed under his breath, eyes coming back to the dying Lucian that was still being eaten alive by whatever the hell those glowing things were.

He sent Ern back to the squad but remained to watch until there was nothing left of Brask but grey life-fluid in the water.

Efficient,
he thought grimly,
but I’ll not forget this, local. You will not catch us this way again.

Only then did Kriss, squadron deice of the Lucian Sentinals, turn and stalk back into the jungle to where his somewhat reduced squad was waiting.

*****

Jerry collapsed against a tree. He didn’t know how far he’d gone, but neither could he quite believe he was still breathing. He looked down to see his own blade still jutting from where it was buried in his abdomen and debated the pros and cons of pulling it out.

Con, I yank that bastard out and bleed to death internally,
he thought sourly. 
Pro, if I yank that bastard out, it won’t slice me up anymore inside while I’m frickin’ stumbling and bumbling through this godforsaken jungle.

Honestly, for all he knew about human biology, and specifically the medical treatment of same, it was a coin flip. Pull it out or leave it, either way he figured he wasn’t making it back to basecamp.

The pathfinder took stock of what he had on hand, which was pretty much limited to the clothes on his back and the knife in his gut, before making his choice. Finally, he just went for it and bit down on a branch before pulling the blade out as straight as he could.

Teeth bared, chest heaving, all he wanted to do after that was lie there and bleed to death, but Jerry was and always had been a pretty stubborn man. He forced himself to sit up against the tree he was using for support, wadded up a piece of his shirt, and jammed it into the wound. He leveraged his belt up and over it, tightening it around his abdomen to hold the makeshift bandage in place, then actually slid the knife back into the scabbard it had come from before crossing his fingers and hoping he’d made the right move.

If he had a chance in hell of being rescued, Jerry probably would have left it in place, but since he had to move, to run and stumble and most likely run into trees, branches, and god knew what else…well, he felt better with the blade in its scabbard than in his guts, even if it might have been holding back some of the bleeding.

Time to see if I’m right.

He pushed himself up and off the tree and staggered southward. The people there needed to be warned, because Jerry had a feeling that they weren’t facing bulldozers and forklifts any longer.

Chapter Five

USF Deck Nine

New Mexican counterweight, Level Three

Sorilla was sweating under the extra half-gravity the third level of the New Mexican counterweight offered, finally feeling like she’d recovered from the enforced inactivity of her implant operations. The New Mexican counterweight was built in three separate stages, the first being the primary tourist attraction, which was established at 35,000 kilometers above the planet, where the force of gravity was entirely canceled by the centrifugal force of the rotation. Visitors liked to spend a few days in zero gravity, relaxing, playing, and often getting up to certain more mature types of games while they looked down at the planet below.

The second level was located farther along the cable, where the centrifugal force created an apparent gravity of Earth normal. More serious business was done there, including embarking outbound spacecraft and other such vital interests.

The new third level was built above that again, and it provided a high-intensity training area for people bound for higher gravity worlds, as well as those who might have to endure the higher accelerations of spacecraft and other physically demanding tasks.

It also, as Sorilla was learning, made for a superlative training center for special operations.

She arrived on the counterweight station a few weeks earlier, along with several hundred others from allied Special Forces units. SF, SEALS, JTF2, SAS, SBS, Shayetet 13, the list went on and on. She knew a few of them, worked with fewer still, enough to know that they were all considered among the best their nations had to offer.

USF isn’t taking the piss on this one,
she thought with grim satisfaction.

About two weeks into the training, that idea was driven home when the first Russian Spetznaz showed up. The tensions between them and the allied groups weren’t as bad as it might have been back in the late twentieth century, but they’d clashed a few times since then, and while working with the Russians was certainly not unusual, it wasn’t precisely common either. Once the Chinese PLA-SOF started to trickle in, it became damned clear that things had turned a corner.