Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (19 page)

“Oh, son of a bitch!” She started cursing fluently in four languages as she kicked off the side and aimed for the control console.

She alit, clumsily swinging into the chair and strapping down as the station’s captain arrived. Lieutenant Commander Beaufort wasn’t looking much better than her as he caromed off a manual control panel and snagged the seat beside her.

“What’s going on?” he growled.

“Gravity event,” she said tersely, eyeing the accelerometers. “Incoming unidentified on universal penetration path. It’s big.”

“Big? How big? We’ve got a taskforce out there.”

“Bigger,” she said, eyes flying over the data. “Twice the size, easy.”

“Shit,” Beaufort muttered, hand swiping a bank of switches that brought everything he had fully online. “Weapons going hot. Targeting systems?”

“Online,” she answered. “Stand by for penetration in…ten seconds.”

The countdown was agonizingly long, each second churning their stomachs and taking a year off their lives. They were the only two on-station, since the entire place really only needed people there to make fire/no fire decisions, and suddenly they felt far more alone than they ever had.

“Three…two…one…” Sinj droned, her training keeping her voice steady even as she wanted to jump up and run around gibbering. “Penetration.”

Ships barreling their way through the space-time barrier should have been a spectacular event, something astonishing, epic, and truly memorable. In reality, however, they just came out of nowhere so fast that, to the human eye, they appeared to be decelerating from a distance, the same as you’d expect to see on Earth if you were dealing with something that could move that fast. This time, the appearance of the ships so startled the two observers that Beaufort’s hand started to come down automatically on the fire controls.

“IFF challenge response passed!” Sinj called out, startling him so badly he almost leaned on the firing pad anyway.

“What?” he blurted, eyes flickering from the mess outside to look at her. If there was one thing that mass wasn’t, it was something built by humans.

“It’s Taskforce Valkyrie, sir.” She smirked, looking a little smug.

Beaufort rolled his eyes at the appellation the taskforce had been saddled with, but he knew that a lot of the female officers were taking pride in the term that had originally been tossed around more than a little insultingly. That, however, wasn’t his problem at the moment. He looked out through the scopes again. “No way that’s anything we ever built.”

The grouping of ships looked like some insane kinetic sculpture, designed by a fool and marketed by an idiot. There were no clear lines, he couldn’t see a single thing that looked like USF markings, and the whole damn thing massed way too damned much.

However, the IFF handshake was pretty clear.

“Hail them,” he growled.

“Aye, sir.”

*****

USS Cheyenne

Alamo shipyards, Sol Space

“Good to be home,” Patrick said as he unstrapped and floated clear of his station.

They were parked in the middle of the Trojan belt, a few hundred miles from the Alamo facility, and pretty much every ship in the squadron was currently covered in men from said shipyards as they stripped them of their trophy.

Well, at least Fleet command is happy.
He smirked, still amused by the reactions of the people staffing the jump point fortress. 
Happier than that lieutenant commander was, at least. I thought he was going to start cursing at the admiral.

In one way, he couldn’t blame the poor guy, but it was pretty funny to see the angry face start sputtering as he slammed on the brakes at the sight of the admiral. Once they’d talked their way through jump point security, Nadine brought them directly to the Alamo. Hundreds of Alamo techs were waiting for them by the time they arrived, and Patrick had actually been shocked by the number of space-suited figures that had swarmed his ship and the others of the squadron.

The recovered wreck was quite probably the most important, or potentially important, discovery in recorded history, particularly given the current situation. Patrick was certain that the researchers would be chomping at the bit to get their hands on even shattered pieces of the alien tech, and he just hoped that they could do something with it.

Without it, we don’t stand a chance in hell if these people decide to get serious.

*****

USF counterweight, Level Three

New Mexican tether

“All of you are familiar with most of the gear you’ve been assigned, I presume?” Lieutenant Commander Nelson Figgs looked around the room, eyes open for anyone disagreeing.

No one did, so he just nodded and went on.

“There are no significant changes in the operators’ Model Power-Enhancing Armor, so we’ll set that aside for the moment,” he said, pausing only briefly beside the empty shell of armor before he moved on. “The current issue rifle is also the same as you should all be used to, though this model makes use of some new generation power cells, so it’ll fire longer and more effectively. Again, however, all the changes are in its capacity, not its capability. The same holds true for the standard issue knives, grenades, and so forth. We’re giving you better medical gear than any other frontline group has ever enjoyed; you’ll be receiving in depth courses on its use shortly.”

The assembled operators listening to his lecture nodded along, some taking notes but most not bothering. Sorilla herself was listening, but in a half attentive sort of way as she used her new implants to analyze the room in minute detail while practicing neural control over the various pieces of bionetic gear buried in her body.

In a controlled environment, hyper-spectral analysis was really fascinating. She could “see” the brand of aftershave in use by the presenter, note that his sweat indicated that he was a controlled diabetic, and spot a hint of some rather illegal tobacco smoke on his uniform.

He’s lucky no one else has these implants just yet,
she thought wryly.

There were some strong limitations becoming evident, however. Even in a controlled environment like Level Three, it was clear that the danger of data overload was extreme. If she relaxed her attention and let her eyes wander while in hyper-spectral mode, she’d be assaulted by dozens upon dozens of trace readings from those in the room and those who had been in the room in the past.

In a natural environment like the jungle, hyper-spectral would be effectively useless in manual search mode. She’d have to rely on the computer to analyze and report on any flagged or dangerous substances, which meant that anything the computer didn’t recognize would be ignored.

That wasn’t really the best way to run things when you were going to be scurrying around one alien world after another and doing pretty much nothing
but
encountering new and unknown compounds.

“One new piece of kit, as you can see, is the new issue pistol.”

Sorilla refocused her attention on the lieutenant commander as he picked up the large handgun from the table in front of him and turned it so they could see it from different angles.

“As you’re all aware, magnetic accelerator technology has never been particularly effective in anything significantly smaller than a rifle.”

That was true enough. Though some civilian weapons had been made using the technology, there were finite limits to how fast you could accelerate a useful projectile along a short barrel. Long guns simple worked better, which was why Sorilla’s preferred backup for armor operations was a SOCOM modified Smith 500. Revolvers were rugged and durable and could take much hotter loads than comparable automatics.

What he was holding up, however, wasn’t a revolver.

“This is the M-Tac Model 50,” he said, cracking the gun open like an old school shotgun and drawing a long box from his belt. He slid it right into the barrel section of the gun and snapped the weapon shut with a flick of his wrist. “A Metalstorm configuration weapon, the 50 has no magazine in the grip, so the ergonomics are reasonable for just about any size hands, whether you’re in armor or not. The over and under two-barrel magazine holds fifty rounds in each barrel, each round a fifty caliber smart type capable of independent seeking or being fire controlled through your implants.”

That was impressive, Sorilla decided. Her standard issue rifle could do that, but pistol calibers generally had to make do with dumb munitions.

“Like all MS class weapons, rate of fire is a moot point,” he said with a wry smile. “While technically capable of firing a million rounds per minute, I don’t know of anyone who’s ever managed it.”

Several people chuckled at that, but it was the strict truth. MS weapons were theoretically capable of incredible rates of fire, but for practical purposes, you rarely saw the potential realized except on some shipboard designs that really couldn’t compete with magnetic accelerators for power, speed, and effect.

Still, from what Sorilla was aware, the ROF was so high on handheld MS weapons that you could fire the entire magazine’s worth in one burst before the recoil of the first round translated to your hand. It was as close to an old sci-fi “beam gun” as you got in the real world, with the capacity of putting a hundred heavy-caliber rounds right through the same hole in a split second. Combined with guidance tech and military payloads, it was potentially a good replacement for her revolver.

She’d have to run a few thousand rounds through one before she made an initial judgment, however.

Looks too good to be true, sounds too good to be true, probably is too good to be true.

“Naturally, the loaded barrels make this weapon a little nose-heavy,” the lieutenant commander droned on, “which isn’t a problem in armor, or when making quick shots while out of armor. It can make aiming at longer ranges an issue, so you just snap down this section here…”

He broke a section away from the bottom of the barrel, and it folded out into a second handgrip, allowing the lieutenant commander to steady his control of the weapon and use it as a PDW, or submachine gun.

“All ranges will have these available for practice with military dummy rounds,” he said after he’d snapped the grip back into place. “No one will be issued live ordnance until
after
you leave the space station.”

He gave them all a look that indicated very clearly his doubt that they’d be able to control themselves from trying outlive explosives, even onboard a space station. Honestly, she’d be more annoyed, but Sorilla was having a hard time keeping from laughing at the looks on some of her comrades’ faces. All except for two of them, who she
swore
were looking quite chagrined and were obviously trying to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

Those two scared the piss out of her.

Best not ask any questions. I
so
don’t want to hear it while I’m stilling sharing bulkheads with that pair.

*****

The Alamo shipyards

Jovian Trojan Point

Nadine was floating in one of the Alamo’s observer’s lounges, looking out over the number eight slip and the floating hull of the Apache Warrior.

“I understand she’s not recoverable,” she said softly.

“That’s right, Admiral,” Captain May said softly. “The valve assault cracked open the hull along the aft section. Destroyed most of the VASIMR control circuits at the same time. Those can be repaired, but the hull would never be the same after a patch job.”

She nodded solemnly. The cast-nickel-iron nature of the hull took strength from its intact design; any flaw in the integrity of the superstructure would be an unacceptable compromise during high-stress maneuvers. A few years earlier, it might have been overlooked for a time, at least until another hull was ready to enter service, but with the current military situation, any ship that couldn’t be certified to handle at least fifteen-gravity maneuvering had no business being near the front lines.

Still, it was something of an unfortunate thing to see a new ship already heading back to the forge.

“Have you been reassigned?” she asked May softly.

“I’m in charge of sim training, at least until another hull becomes available,” James May said with a soft sigh. “We may have a shortage of experienced captains, ma’am, but the ship side of things isn’t exactly any better. Until an unassigned ship is completed, I’m riding herd on captains already assigned ships that are coming out of the forge over the next few months.”

“Naval Warfare Center in the UK?” she asked.

“No, the USF has leased the Dubai tether,” he corrected her. “Installing new facilities on their cargo line. It’s actually pretty impressive. The new sims can go from microgravity to four-g’s by travelling along the tether line.”

“Very impressive,” she agreed.

“Yeah.”

There was something in his tone that might have concerned her if she didn’t know precisely what the cause was and already sympathize with him.

“It’s an important duty, James,” Nadine said seriously.

“Yeah, but it’s not the duty I want.” He shrugged. “So be it. I can’t expect anything more…not after losing my ship first time out.”

“James,” she cut him off sternly, “you may have lost the ship, but you kept the crew alive. There were a lot of good men and women before you who didn’t manage that much.”

He nodded reluctantly then smiled in a self-deprecating manner. “I suppose I’m feeling a little sorry for myself is all, ma’am.”

“Understandable, but training up-and-coming command officers is going to be at least as important as commanding any ship, James,” she told him simply. “Likely more important.”

“I know, ma’am,” he acceded. “I’m not taking it lightly, I assure you.”

“Never crossed my mind that you were, James,” she told him. “Just wanted to remind you that you weren’t.”

He nodded, smiling at the twisting words. “Message received and understood, ma’am. Wilco and out.”