Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (22 page)

It was rapidly turning into a slugging match in the jungle, and as much as Kayne hated to admit it…his people weren’t cut out for going head-to-head with operators of this class.

They were learning, however. The ones who survived.

Since he’d sent the drone out, they’d confirmed at least one enemy casualty, to a punji pit of all damned things. Using stakes topped with molecular blades, they’d sliced one of the bastards to ribbons when he and his unit pulled back from hitting a farmstead. The civilians hadn’t survived, but at least they’d blooded the aliens and recovered one of their weapons.

Not that anyone was able to figure it out.

Oh, it worked.

The gun operated close enough to a rifle that it didn’t take any work to figure out how to fire it, but that was all there was on it that anyone recognized. It seemed to be cast construction, some lightweight alloy that didn’t match with anything in the records, but had no seams and only the one moving part. Except for the trigger, there was nothing else on the damn thing they could manipulate, and not a single one of the eggheads on the planet could figure out how to take it apart.

He’d get it on the next ship heading back to Sol and hope someone there could figure the thing out.

In the meantime, attempts at securing the continent had mired down as they were forced to relocate more and more of their forces to protecting the areas they already controlled. He’d give his eyeteeth for better intel on the enemy forces, but they’d become jungle ghosts that showed no signs of their passage.

Even the best of the Hayden pathfinders could only find occasional tracks as the teams scoured the jungles between the FOB and the old colony site.

Best intel indicated that there couldn’t be many of them, at least they hadn’t shown any significant numbers, but Kayne’s attempts to secure the surface of Hayden had been stalled in its tracks by them. They had to be an advanced force, though, because as dangerous as they were, Kayne was certain that there was no way in hell a force as apparently small as this one could really do crippling damage to his own. And even if they could somehow take out his troops, they couldn’t secure the planet.

No, they were here to delay humans from reestablishing control and putting defenses into place. Somewhere, out there beyond Hayden’s star, the real enemy was coming. Kayne just hoped to hell that Fleet got here first.

*****

Sentinel basecamp

North of the abandoned colony

Kriss noted the change in status on the mission board as he entered the command post they’d set up and nodded with satisfaction.

These soldiers aren’t bad, but they’re certainly no better than any of the regular forces of the Alliance worlds, and most certainly no match for Sentinels.

Since the first blundering encounter, one that Kriss would likely forever use as an example of what
not
to do when on a mission, they’d had some close calls here and there but mostly managed to avoid serious casualties. Three more dead, one they hadn’t been able to recover due to the time press and the rather extreme method of trap the enemy had used, along with a smattering of minor to moderate injuries.

Nothing that significantly affected the strength of the squad they’d landed on-world with, so Kriss hadn’t had to put in for reinforcements to date, which was good, as his team had a reputation none of them wanted tarnished. In return for those minor losses, they’d managed to effectively grind enemy movements to a halt, globally, and force them into an area a few thousand mid-breadths’ diameter on the coast of the primary continent.

It didn’t take a Sentinel Warmaster to determine that their basecamp had to be inside that region, likely toward the center of the range along the coast or near one of the major river systems that ran through it.

Likely both, actually,
Kriss supposed, eyeing the map. There were a half dozen river deltas that emptied into the ocean within the likely range, and those were often the preferred place for regular forces to make camp.

In situations like this, where they were cut off from air travel, the sea and rivers would offer an attractive mode of transport to many commanders, so there was a strong possibility that they were within close range to one of those deltas.

For the moment, however, that was outside his purview. He didn’t have enough of a force to wipe out a credible military installation, and even regular soldiers were dangerous if you put enough of them in one place and didn’t have a DSD firebase to call on for support.

His job was simply to delay the enemy, make them waste resources and people, and wait for the Fleet taskforce to reinforce the system. If Fleet took their time, Kriss hoped to bankrupt the enemy military entirely.

It wouldn’t be the first time a Sentinel team destroyed the government of a world they never once set foot upon.

With that thought in mind, Kriss examined the patrol charts and noted that another of his teams should be in position to cost the enemy a little something extra shortly.

*****

Grand Hayden River

The electric motors the military had fabbed for the boats were powerful enough to handle some serious seas, so the relatively small patrol boats they’d built from Hayden hardwood trees whirred along at a brisk clip as they made their way upriver. Each of the two boats carried full squads and were staffed by crews of six, two of whom rode the fore and aft cannons while scanning the jungle along either side of the wide river with every scanner tech in their kit.

Unfortunately for them, they were learning what the aliens had learned the hard way when they attempted to trace Sorilla and her Hayden pathfinders during the opening shots of the war. That is, no matter how advanced your tech was, penetrating more than a couple meters of thick jungle was effectively impossible.

Heat scanners were pointless, the teeming jungle was filled with hot-blooded (for lack of a better term) animals that were constantly on the move. Even if you could differentiate between them, you only got maybe a dozen meters of penetration through the thick jungle plants. That barely reached the banks of the river in some places, let alone somewhere where an enemy might be positioned.

Similarly, most other penetrative technologies were as limited, with the x-ray scanners being the most effective overall. They got about forty or fifty meters on those, but the resolution degraded almost exponentially past the first dozen or so. Since the systems relied on reflected radiation, they were pushing things to get that much.

The best solution available was to use multiple drones to scour the jungle ahead of the boats as they advanced and then compile the cross referenced data with the penetrative scanners and basically hope for the best. Under ideal situations, it was an almost effective method of securing the route the boats were travelling along.

Unfortunately, it was also tedious and slow-going, and after a few dozen trips, the crews had begun to get sloppy and complacent, thinking the area secured.

Sloppiness in a warzone inevitably led to sorrow.

The first hint of the attack came as a warping of the air along the north bank of the river just ahead of them, easily missed or dismissed as heat haze. The soldiers on the first ships became aware of the threat when the accelerometers onboard suddenly started screaming into their implants a fraction of an instant before everything seemed to explode in the faces.

The first strikes from the enemy weapons took out the weapon stations on the lead boat, with follow up strikes nailing the boat itself just below the waterline. The computer cores of the two boats responded with automatic return fire, triangulating based on accelerometer readings, and the second boat roared as hypersonic rounds slammed into the jungle ahead. Razors and flame tore the jungle to pieces, shredding leaves, trees, beasts, rocks, and anything else that lay in their path as the surviving men on the two boats scrambled to get a handle on the situation.

The deck of the lead boat was splattered with flesh and blood from the man manning the forward gun. His remains had practically been atomized and splattered back across the windscreen and men beyond, while those of the man in the rear position were now sinking to the bottom of the river and poisoning any unfortunate aquatics that happened to feed on them.

From the other side of the river, another warp blast erupted, tearing into the second boat just seconds behind the first, silencing the automatic fire from the patrol boat in a single moment of explosive carnage. Men were thrown to the deck hard, skidding into the bulkheads or right over the side in a couple cases, but quickly managed to get back to their feet…or more often, their knees as they finally managed to bring their own guns into play.

Guided by implants, the boats’ computer cores issued orders automatically, and the men leveled their weapons at the triangulated origins of the attack and opened up with their rifles on full auto.

Again, the jungle was shredded, literally cutting down the flora as if with a scythe and leaving nothing but the skeletal remains of the trees intact this time.

The roar went on for long seconds, soldiers reloading and emptying the second load into the jungle before the captains of the boats stepped in and ordered them to check their fire.

“Anyone see any of the fuckers?” Lt. Jay Smith growled as he crouched low enough to get some cover, relying on his implants to relay data from the boat’s scanners. “Even
one of them
?”

A long silence passed before people slowly started to admit that they’d seen nothing but jungle.

“FUCK!”

“Lead boat is foundering, sir. They’re running the pumps on full, but they’ll be lucky to get back to the FOB. They’re not going any farther upriver.”

Smith snarled, showing teeth as he considered his options, and finally made a decision. “Neither are we. I’m calling a mission abort, we’re RTB.”

“Yes, sir.”

He glared into the jungle, wishing he could at least report that they’d taken some of their attackers with them but knowing damned well that the odds were against it. In just under five seconds, they’d lost four high-powered weapon turrets, near shattered two boats, and lost four good and nearly irreplaceable men in the process.

If we don’t get a handle on this, we’re going to be mired down on this planet for decades.

*****

USF Cheyenne

On Hayden approach

The Cheyenne was on silent approach to Hayden, a tactic that was adding another week to their travel time, but as no one could be certain that another valve hadn’t been brought online, Admiral Nadine Brookes had ordered a different approach from the last time.

Any observer on a planet would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb in every sense of the word to miss a VASIMR pulse drive decelerating in their direction, so they were coming in slow on a ballistic overtake course that would use Hayden’s lunar gravity to slow the ship just before they hit Hayden atmo. It was risky, since they’d be a slower target than usual for a prolonged period on approach, but the admiral and captain had cooked up some answers for that as well and everyone was aware that things were going to get
exciting
when they made final approach.

The rest of the squadron was blasting around the star system on the other side of the planet from the Cheyenne’s approach, under full acceleration and with every com channel they had blaring for the universe to hear. The hope was that people would be looking over there while the Cheyenne pulled a fast one and dropped up the operator teams in advance of the planned landing of reinforcements.

All of this was the reason why the three squads of operators were floating in microgravity, occupying one of the larger conference rooms on the Cheyenne as Captain Washington issued the final mission brief.

“All right, we’ve picked up the latest data chirp from Hayden, and the situation has continued to deteriorate along the lines we’d half expected,” he said calmly, looking the teams over. “All indications are that this new group are operators of some respectable skill. I think it’s fair to say that we’re seeing the other side’s varsity now, which is going to make things really interesting for us.”

Some good-natured groans and banter were passed around, but on the whole, the group stayed focused, as they knew that the countdown clock was already winding down to zero hour.

“Our job is simple enough, in theory, but is likely to be a bitch and half in practice,” Washington said grimly, nodding to a map of Hayden on the wall screen. “We know that the enemy forces are operating in the vicinity of the old colony site, which could be in response to our troops’ presence on the same continent, or it could be because they’re preparing to secure the site for a new valve installation.

“In either case, we can’t let that stand. Our job will be to tie up and inflict significant casualties on the enemy operators, allowing our ground troops to continue their actions in securing the continent. Until we complete that, TFV won’t be able to come in with the resupply shuttles and weapon satellites.”

They all knew it was coming, but they groaned anyway. Counter insurgency ops were bad enough as a general rule, but when you had to run your missions against experienced and skilled operators, things quickly got dicey. In this case, it likely meant shadowing their own ground forces as they patrolled the jungle, which meant that they were risking being shot at by the aliens
and
the friendly ground forces in the area.

It was a fairly common mission profile back on Earth, however, so they all knew the drill.

“Unfortunately, while the local FOB will be aware of our presence, we won’t have reliable communications,” Ton went on. “That means that field teams will
not
have any idea where we are, and I can’t see the brigadier in charge issuing orders to his patrols telling them
not
to engage unknown contacts…so we’ll probably be shot at by our own boys. Everyone, triple-check your IFF transponders
before
we leave the Cheyenne. They might be the only thing between you and a high-ex round detonating inside your chest plate.”