The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (12 page)

For all that, however, their enemy was apparently unimpressed.

The Terra and the Canada were one jump into enemy territory, though now it might be considered significantly more since they’d slammed the door shut on the jump point back to Hayden and it was going to damn well stay that way for a while. That was just great for Hayden, but it didn’t do much for the two ships on the wrong side of the jump point now, not when they were faced with a fleet of ships that looked to consist of at least five different alien groups. That was just a guess based on ship design and scans of their power curve, weapons use, and other factors including NAVINT (Naval Intelligence) analysis of their tactics.

They recognized two of the ship types easily. They were clearly variants of the Ghoulie Gravity Valve monsters that first showed up during the initial invasion of Hayden’s World, and the Delta species that had mounted the last assault on the system. Between those two types, at least three other distinctive design philosophies appeared evident, which was striking when compared to Earth designs over the last few centuries.

Form, for humans, followed function. A good design was immediately recognized and copied
ad nauseum
until every fleet on Earth used something more or less identical. That had been the way things worked since the early days of sail, and still worked through to this day. Even the Chinese, who were as insular a people as any on Earth, used designs that were very similar to the Cheyenne Class.

They didn’t have anything like the Terra, of course, but that was likely just a matter of time and a good spy or two.

“Lead elements are coming into optimal range, Captain,” Douglas announced after a moment’s observation.

“I see them, Commander,” Captain Richmond answered. “Lock them up.”

“Target bandit elements one through five!” Douglas called out sharply.

“Bandits one through five, aye, sir! Targeted!”

“Fire the Hammers,” Pierce ordered a moment later.

“Aye, Captain! Firing!”

A rapid-fire burst of twenty “Hammer” Class projectiles blasted away into space.

Those on the ship didn’t even register the departure of the magnetically accelerated weapons, the minute force of their departure barely enough to be detected by their onboard accelerometers. However, the Hammers hid a secret, one that the enemy hadn’t yet seen in a fight. Douglas leaned forward, involuntarily angling for a better look at the plot.

Each of the Hammers was a hundred-kilo spike of steel accelerated to around 0.4c by the massive magnetic rails on the Terra. That alone would be enough to wreak some serious havoc on anything they slammed into, but inside their steel cores they each hid a variation of the enemy’s own weapon, the Gravity Valve.

It wasn’t enough to crush ships under its own weight, but it didn’t have to. Each Valve pulsed as the weapons went into terminal mode, opening the force of gravity by a factor of one hundred. It was enough to deform the steel into an oblong ball of metal, but certainly not enough to initiate gravity-induced fission. What it did do, however, was suddenly increase the kinetic power of the strike a hundred fold.

At better than a third the speed of light, a thousand-kilo effective projectile was enough to vaporize even the most resilient armor, sublimating parts of the enemy ships directly into plasma. Before the Valve core was destroyed by the impact, it went on to actually tear large chunks of the enemy ship, shard from shard, under their own enhanced weight.

Because the effect of the Valve extended beyond the edge of the Hammers themselves, it was almost like firing a miniature black hole through the enemy ships. The enhanced gravity spread as it passed, affecting the material of the enemy ships, and forced them to flex and compress in ways they had never been designed to.

“Targets destroyed.”

The small interceptor and escort ships that had come up with the Ghoulie ships were small potatoes, but eliminating as many of them as possible before the main conflict just made a whole universe of sense.

Captain Richmond nodded, satisfied with the results. “That’s what I would call a successful weapon’s test, people. Good job. Now, lock in the Ghoulie ships and standby to go to rapid-fire on all rails.”

“Aye, sir! Targets locked in, but the ships are holding back outside of optimal range.”

Richmond was unsurprised; the Ghoulies had weapons that redefined the term “standoff range.” The other ships were obviously providing a shielding element while they prepared to engage with Gravity Valves at maximum distances.

That was a luxury that the human ships didn’t have, and if he couldn’t enjoy the little things in life, Captain Richmond had absolutely no intention of allowing his enemies to either.

“Plot our course, Mr. Stewart,” he ordered the helmsmen. “Dead ahead, into the belly of the beast. Point defense weapons are to be at the ready. We’re not going to have time for those smaller ships on the way through. Some will get too close.”

The man at the helm swallowed hard, eyes on the lights that indicated all the enemy ships between them and the targets.

“Course prepared, sir.”

“Ahead then, all flank,” Pierce ordered grimly. “They’re between us and the planet, and you know what that means.”

“All flank, aye, sir.”

It meant that they had to go through the enemy to achieve mission success, and if that was what they had to do, then by God that was just what Pierce intended to do.

The big ships rumbled as there was a brief feeling of quaking while the drives and the gravity well to the bow of the ships fought briefly, then balanced out. The USV Terra and USV Canada began their charge into the black, all hands ready and all weapons primed.

*****

Parath wanted to hit something, his frustrations growing by the second as he watched his interceptors being destroyed piecemeal by the aliens without the Ross ships bothering to so much as provide the slightest cover. The Ross were an inscrutable race at the best of times, but few would ever call them stupid. Right now, however, he had no other word that could be used to describe their actions.

They were charging blindly like maddened Lucian regulars, which was entirely unlike them.

This strange empire, there is something here that…I think, none of us know, save perhaps the Ross. Have they had dealings with them before? Do they know something we do not? How did this minor empire jump from what records clearly show to be a mid-range fledgling space-faring society to a group that can now
shut down
a gravetic gateway?

There was more going on than anyone knew, certainly more than he knew, but he’d be damned to the eternal singular abyss if he could work out what it was.

Whatever the Ross are after, it’s more than enough for them to risk their treaty and place with the Alliance in its pursuit. Yet…
Even that didn’t make sense to him.
If that is the case… why did they summon us in to help them
in the first place?

The whole situation was spiraling out of control, and Parath had a sneaking suspicion that if he didn’t get a handle on it quickly, then he could very easily be looking at the beginning of a genocidal campaign. The Ross were not known for restraint, and out this far from the Alliance? They were clearly not interested in showing any now, nor did they have the political reasons to do so.

The problem was that not one ounce of it made any sense whatsoever, and he didn’t have any time to try and force it to make sense either.

“Time to intercept?”

“The aliens have accelerated toward the Ross ships,” his aide said, tone filled with disbelief.

Parath didn’t blame him. No one accelerated
toward
a Ross battleship. A smart commander stood off a long distance, never stopped moving, and hammered them with extreme range weapons until there were no two molecules that remained sticking to one another.

“We’re closing, but the alien ships will engage the Ross momentarily.”

“If they make it past the Ross, will we beat them to the planet?”

The young officer gave him a look that clearly said that the youth thought he was insane for asking what would happen
if
they made it past the Ross, but Parath didn’t give a damn what he thought. He just stared at the youth until he blushed blue, ducked his head back down, and answered, “No, Master. They will make the planet before we can intercept.”

“Blast.”

“What do you think is at the planet?”

Parath glanced over at his second and waggled his hand. “Nothing. I expect that they will use the planet as a gravity assist.”

“To escape?”

“Yes. Likely to this system’s fourth jump point. That will take them back around one of the long routes that eventually makes its way back to their space,” Parath said. “It is what I would do, were I stranded in this situation.”

“High praise, Master.”

“No, merely giving them that which they’ve shown to be their due. They are ship handlers of some skill.”

For a Parithalian, there was little more that needed to be said.

Parath had trained most of his life to be a master of ships, the avian before the master of everything onboard ship. Parithalian chits grew up knowing the basics of flight to a degree that most species considered to be bordering on the supernatural. Nothing in three dimensions was hidden from their eyes, and it was instinct as well as skill that caused Parithalians to be the unbreakable spine of the Alliance Fleet.

Even the Ross had fallen against them eventually, bloody though that war had been.

So when Parath, a blooded master of ships, said that his opponents were handlers of some skill, he meant precisely what he said. Not a fluff more, not a fluff less.

*****

USV Terra

Pierce gripped the arm of his seat like it was a lifeline and he was a drowning man, the sheer size of the alien ships beginning to filter into his head.

My God, they’re bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. These aren’t the same class of Ghoulie ship, that’s for damned sure.

“We’re in their range now, we have to be.”

“Belay that whining,” Pierce growled, shutting up the fearful words. The last thing he needed was to let that sort of talk get started on the bridge during a battle. “Standby all weapons.”

“A…all weapons standing by, aye, Captain.”

“Fire.”

The Hammers launched on rapid fire, all tubes lighting up the screens as they emptied the magazines. Beside them, the Canada opened up as well, her Hammers tracking on the second Ghoulie ship as both ships bore down on the pair in a completely mad game of chicken.

“Gravity event detected!”

“Launch countermeasures!” Pierce snarled, though, honestly, he shouldn’t have had to give that order. If his people weren’t smart enough to do just that in the face of a Ghoulie weapon assault, then he needed a new crew.

“Countermeasures away!”

The Terra flushed the defensive tubes just ahead of the Canada, both ships putting dozens of canisters into space in rapid fire. The devices, each just a little larger than a fifty-gallon oil drum, exploded in a brilliant flash of energy-like flares around the ships as everyone tensed.

“All hands, standby for turbulence.”

The calm voice belied the tension in every section of the starship as people grabbed onto whatever they could and began to pray.

It started softly, a vibration that was almost imperceptible, but climbed rapidly. The two ships rumbled and rocked like cruisers at sea in a perfect storm. The decks bucked underfoot and systems wailed as the computers struggled mightily to keep the gravity core in tune with the motion of the ship.

Those canisters had broken up the local space-time, much as the larger ones at the jump point shut the door on FTL travel, and in the next few seconds, as the Ghoulie weapon was focused on them, the Valve found that someone had crimped the hose it was trying to turn on.

On the bridge of the Terra, Pierce was holding his breath as he watched the screens. After a few long, interminably long, seconds, he let out the air and shook his head in some wonder.

“Well, I’ll be damned, the countermeasures actually worked.”

His XO shot him an ugly look, to which Pierce just shrugged and grinned.

“You know as well as I do it was a hail Mary, Paul.”

Paul Sanders rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but I wasn’t planning on ever admitting it. Not while I was sober, sir.”

Pierce laughed, loudly, and turned his focus back to the bridge.

“ETA to Hammer time ,” he called, feeling far too good for a man who had yet to lead his ships into the fight he knew was coming.

“Two minutes to impact, Captain.”

“Expedite reloading the magazines. I want to hit them again.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

*****

“What was that?” Parath demanded, glaring at the screens.

The battle was being relayed back to them via the FTL communications systems on the remaining interceptors he had dispatched to cover the Ross'El. The blinding flares, or whatever they were, had briefly flooded out the screens, but the effect hadn’t remained long enough to be of much tactical use.

Perhaps if they were in close enough, under a single light interval, but not at these ranges.

“Master…scanners on the interceptors show that the Ross have engaged with their primary weapons.”

Parath blinked. Twice.

“The alien ships didn’t maneuver, did they?”

He hadn’t seen them do it, but then, he hadn’t seen them explode, either, and at the range they were fighting, it damned well should have been one or the other. Often both.

“No, Master.”

“Failure of the Ross weapon?” Parath asked, skeptical. There was a first time for everything, he supposed.

“Both ships’ weapons, Master?”

No, that didn’t happen.

That really didn’t leave many options, the only one was that…

Parath thought back to the moment the two ships had entered the system and what they had done to the system’s gravity gate that led back to their world.

“Singular abyss,” he swore. “They’re matching the Ross, gravity weapon for gravity weapon.”