Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (31 page)

“What about the alien ‘operators’?” Kayne asked.

“Bravo and Gamma are working in nearby AOs,” Sorilla offered. “We’ll try and hook up with them, and then start an operator war they’ll not soon forget.”

“All right,” Kayne said when Crow nodded in affirmation. “Make it happen.”

“Yes, sir!”

*****

Lucian base

North of former colony site

“Deice!”

Kriss looked up as his sub-altern rushed in. He could already feel the pain forming deep in his mind just looking at his expression. “What is it?”

“It’s the Ross Ell, they’re on the move.”

“What?” Kriss surged up, pushing his work station aside. “To where?”

“The original DSD installation. They’re preparing to install a new device.”

Kriss frowned, considering it. On the one hand, a new DSD was precisely what they needed. With that on call, his Sentinels would easily end the problems on this planet within no more than a lunar cycle. On the other hand…

“They’re on the move, you say? Where?”

“They’re at the site now.”

“What?” Kriss swore in three Alliance languages as he strode out of the room, heading for the main command center of his base.

When he got there, he swore in another two languages.

What are they thinking? Openly moving like that when we haven’t secured the entire continent is madness.
He stared at the screens for a moment. “Do we have anyone patrolling that area now?”

“No, Deice. After your squad was…”

“Right.” There was no need to say more. His squad had been in charge of covering that area, and he’d personally ordered them out. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t make the slightest of differences, but with the Ross Ell apparently losing their collective
minds
, things had changed.

“Half a damned cycle. That’s all they had to wait. Half a cycle, and we’d control the orbitals of this world,” he muttered as he stomped out of the base.

It was probably nothing, really. With only a few marks before the fleet took up positions in orbit, the window for their enemy to make use of was extremely narrow.

But they have Sentinels…and what would I do?

Kriss knew damned well what he would do in their position.

“Sentinels! To me!”

*****

Rio Hayden

Sorilla was impressed at how fast the Hayden-built river patrol boats were. The electric motors the base fabbed were powerful enough to pick the front end of the boat up and put them on a hydroplane as they whined upriver. The deck was inclined more than twenty degrees, and she found herself holding onto the railing much the way she would brace herself during minor acceleration onboard a ship. The wind was rushing by, but she could neither feel nor hear it in her armor, as her attention was focused on the jungle ahead of them.

Despite being well within the “secure” area, she wasn’t taking chances and neither was anyone else. The two mounted rail guns pivoted at the slightest provocation as they scanned ahead, looking for anything out of place, and her fellow operators were just as vigilant. This was the most vulnerable they would be on the upcoming mission, the lack of cover on the river making them nothing more than sitting ducks.

They needed the speed offered by the river, however, to get within striking range on the timetable the approaching ships had set for them. So they sucked it up, putting their heads on a swivel and trigger fingers on speed.

Ahead of them, the second river patrol boat was taking point, and they had best be as vigilant as Sorilla and her team, because if they weren’t they didn’t have to worry about the aliens killing them. Sorilla would personally make sure that they wished the alien operators got to them first.

Jerry had told her about the previous incident on the river, one reason why they were going to stay as far back from the edge of the secure zone as they possibly could. Complacency would get more than yourself killed in a warzone like this, and she had no desire to die because someone else got sloppy.

“Five minutes to the preliminary AO,” Crow announced as he stepped out of the cabin of the boat. “We’re going to cast from the boats.”

Sorilla just haloed the green light on her HUD, flashing Crow a thumbs up. Casting meant that the RPB wouldn’t even slow down when they reached the AO, and the team would cast out into the wake of the boat in as low a profile as possible. From there they’d make their way to shore underwater while the boats continued upriver some distance before turning back.

If anyone was watching, there was at least a reasonable chance that they’d be able to hide their insertion point that way, and it also reduced their exposure over slowing the boats and disembarking normally. Given Crow’s SEAL training, Sorilla was far from surprised to hear him choose that method of insertion.

They moved down to the aft of the boat, waiting for the turn in the river to come up as planned. When it did, they waited for the boats to power around the turn, and as soon as the river behind them was obscured by the bank, they cast over the side and into the roiling water of the boat’s wake. Muddy brown river water filled her HUD; nothing but silt and foam was visible as Sorilla let herself sink to the bottom before gaining her bearings and moving to the bank.

She paused as the water grew shallow, unlimbering her rifle while she waited for the others to get in position, then rose from the water and moved forward to the bank of the river. Crow, Korman, and Mackenzie appeared alongside her as they made their way into the jungle. Once inside cover, they paused to gather their kit from the waterproof bags then headed for the old logging road.

They hit the road in a sprint, racing along the rough gravel and packed dirt as fast as the four of them could run in armor while carrying their kit. There was something of an art to really hitting high speeds in armor, and strength wasn’t the key. Push off the ground too fast and you’d spend more time in parabola slowing down due to air resistance the whole way. The secret was short, fast hops that were very shallow and didn’t expose the runner by doing anything silly, like flying above tree level.

By risking the logging road, the four managed to turn the last half of their trip into a sprint that took up less than a tenth the time of the first, only stopping at the last hill before the road headed down toward the colony plateau.

The last ten percent of the journey wound up taking as long as the first ninety percent as they all but crawled into position, Crow finding the location of the buried fiber optics line the general had spoken of and following it to the sensor that had brought them out all this way.

The four knelt at the edge of the Hayden jungle and watched the activity around the old colony site with cold eyes as they considered their next action.

“All right, I’m into the base network,” Crow said quietly, though he could have screamed and it wouldn’t have penetrated the armored helm. “I wish they’d briefed us on this before we came down. Would make linking up with the others easier.”

Sorilla nodded. “Yeah, but I suspect we’ll be able to get their attention shortly anyway.”

Mackenzie chuckled. “That’s a wee bit of an understatement, Top.”

“All right, enough fun,” Crow said. “Top, take Mack and circle east around the base. K and I will go west. Spot and report targets for artillery and drone strikes. Everyone synced? Good. Coordinate strikes in fifty-seven minutes. That’s ten minutes before the enemy fleet reaches orbit; we don’t have any more time than that. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Good. Go.”

Sorilla and Mackenzie headed east as ordered, stopping at various vantage points to code in new targets for the Cougars, Excaliburs, and Raptors to take out. They kept on the move, trying to find a compromise between stealth and speed. They didn’t want to be spotted, but they had to key in the target coordinates before the time was up, otherwise it was all over.

So when Sorilla heard a sound that didn’t quite fit into the jungle around her, she almost ignored it against her better judgment, the need for speed was so great. Her instincts won out over the pressures of the mission, however, so she took a knee, and her fist came up to stop Mackenzie in his tracks.

He edged forward, his hand coming down on her shoulder to both let her know precisely where he was and to initiate the induction link between them.

“What is it, Top?”

“Something is out here with us,” she replied over the induction link. “Hold tight, I’m going to check it out.”

“Wilco, Top,” he said just before she moved forward, breaking the induction link between their armor.

Sorilla crept ahead, slinging her rifle and pushing it behind her back as she tried to figure out where the sound originated. It took a few moments, but she slowed to a crawl as she heard it again and found herself peering through the wide leaves of the jungle at the first daylight sighting of the new aliens she’d had the opportunity to make.

Three of them. Are they alone?
Sorilla shifted but didn’t move as she tried to see any others. 
If I take them with my rifle, the stealth portion of this mission is officially over…

She laid a hand on the hilt of her blade, debating her options as she watched the three enemy soldiers confer about something. 
If they don’t move soon, I’ll have to risk it.

Heartbeats passed, and just as she was about to chance taking action, the trio broke up and moved off in another direction. Sorilla breathed a sigh of relief and slowly pulled back, finding Mac and reconnecting via the induction link.

“Enemy operators in the AO,” she said. “We should avoid contact if possible. They aren’t our problem.”

“Right.” Mac nodded. “On your lead, Top.”

She broke contact and started moving again, adjusting her direction to give the enemy some space. The time would come to engage them again, but the time wasn’t now.

Soon.

*****

Near the old colony site

Kriss growled in frustration as he watched the materials being lowered into place by the Ross Ell construction ship. Despite his efforts, they refused to delay construction by just the few hours it would take for Fleet to properly secure the orbitals of this world, leaving him in an awkward and vulnerable position.

Actually, they refused to even acknowledge that he was trying to speak to them. The Ross Ell were like that, often entirely ignoring other species’ existence. Their presence in the Alliance was a constant struggle just to keep them from running through allied territories with blithe ignorance of what they were doing. Only a few species were able to get instant recognition from them and, unfortunately for Kriss, the Lucians weren’t one of them.

Unsurprisingly, they don’t ignore any species that’s kicked their bulbous craniums in a fleet action,
he thought sourly as he checked in with his teams.

This was the worst sort of situation for him and the most vulnerable he could imagine being. He and his men were caught with their backs to a wall they had to defend, the enemy…if the enemy was out there, they could hardly miss the construction being undertaken. He couldn’t prove that they were, in fact, out there, but Kriss had that sinking sensation that told him he wasn’t about to be so lucky as to find that they weren’t.

Just a short time more and it’ll be done. The Fleet will be in orbit, and this world will be secure.

As the time slowly passed away, however, Kriss kept thinking about the last short time before security could be established.

If I were the enemy, this is when I would strike.

*****

Joshua Crow held up his fist, signaling a stop, as he crouched in the thickest part of the underbrush and waited for the three aliens to move past his position.

The whole place is crawling with ETs,
he though sourly, holding in place until they had moved on past before he opened his fist and gestured ahead, signaling to Korman that they were moving on.

He felt Korman’s hand on his shoulder as they moved, the induction link coming active.

“What are we going to do about all of them, boss?”

“Nothing,” Crow replied. “Not until we have to. If we get spotted, or we hear that Top and Mac have kicked off the party, then we do what we have to. Until that, however, we do nothing until the clock counts down.”

“Right, ok,” Korman said hesitantly. “You think we can avoid them that long?”

“I pinned my BUD, you’re Shaytet 13. You think we
can’t
?” Crow challenged him.

Korman paused then simply dropped his hand and nodded. Crow smirked under his helm, and the two moved on. He’d learned early from his instructors in BUD/S that the best way to motivate an alpha personality type was to say they
couldn’t
do something.

Honestly, he figured that they had maybe an eighty-twenty chance of getting through the whole mess unnoticed until strike hour. The advantage was certainly resting on their side for once. With only four of them in a section of jungle the size of New York state, he didn’t care how good the enemy was; they were playing with a handicap.

That said, they did have to observe target locations well enough to gather strike coordinates for the artillery and drones, which would put them more in the open than he’d prefer. So the enemy could find them with advanced sensory gear during those moments, or there was always the dumb luck possibility of stumbling over them in the jungle.

Either were possible, and both were bad news for Crow and his team, but those were the cards they’d been dealt.

*****

Sorilla checked the time and decided that they were done. She put her fist up and waited for Mack’s hand on her shoulder to initiate the induction link.

“What’s up, Top?”

“We’re done. Scout for one of those fiber links the regulars ran through here.”

“No problem, we passed one just a little ways back.”

“Show me.”

They pivoted, Sorilla now taking the drag position as they retraced their steps through the jungle to where Mack had spotted the fiber line. It was buried, but he’d noticed the telltale disturbance of the ground. A few more months, if that, and it would be completely invisible, even under their advanced sensing systems, but for the moment they were just as glad that they weren’t.