The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (21 page)

“God damn it, Bean! You’re running that damn thing with manual controls again! If you don’t use your damned implants the way you’re supposed to, I’ll come up there personally and take them back so the Army can give them to someone who deserves them!” she snarled, jabbing a finger in the direction of a machine that was walking even more stiffly than the rest.

The machines could be run on manual, using controls similar to those in a fighter jet, but it was slow and didn’t react according to the design. Good for moving from place to place, maybe doing some basic scut work, but of no value whatsoever to a soldier in a fight.

Francis Bean was an Parajumper, and she was getting tired of making air force jokes about him. Some people just made it too easy.

“Come on, El-Tee,” he whined, making her despise the man even more, “I can move it better like this anyway, and being frozen like that makes my skin crawl.”

“Fine. You want it the hard way, let’s do it the hard way. I’m coming up there, and if you don’t stop me, I’m going relieve you of an implant. Dealer’s choice. Stop me if you can.”

With that as the warning, Sorilla nudged her armor’s helm on and sprinted right at the man. He actually yelped, despite the fact that he was facing a woman in power armor while he was piloting an eighty-ton war machine. Sorilla was sorely tempted to make good on her threat by yanking out his central proc, but the Air Force would probably frown on her lobotomizing one of their PJs.

The bot stepped back from her, still moving clumsily, and she vaulted from a running start to plant her foot on the robotic “thigh” about ten feet up. From there she caught a flailing arm and levered herself up the next ten feet and twisted around to grab a purchase on its back.

In under two seconds, Sorilla was crouched on the back of the wildly flailing bot, keying in the emergency shut down and access code. The big robot ground to a halt as the hatch popped open, and she then just reached in and physically hauled the bigger man out by the back of his own armor.

“If you make me do this again,” she growled, blank helm facing equally blank helm, “then I swear to
god
that the next time I
will
shuck you out of that armor and perform an elective surgery on you that you
will
not enjoy. Are we
clear
?”

“Y…ye…yes, ma’am.”

She dropped him back into the cockpit of the machine. “Jack in and get stiff, dick head. No one leaves here today until you do your job.”

With that she slammed the hatch shut on him and leapt clear, landing easily thirty feet away and walking back toward her own machine.

*****

USV Legendary

Admiral Brooke stepped off the ramp of the transfer shuttle, eyes glancing around the bay. Her mind was still catching up with everything she’d recently learned, and she had to wonder if the Universe would ever feel the same again.

“Ma’am, latest status report is on your workspace.”

“Thank you, Sean,” she told the lieutenant who had come to meet her. “Is everything proceeding with no issues?”

“We shifted training for the strike team to the Socrates, ma’am. Other than that we’re on schedule and on plan.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The Socrates? Why?”

“More room, ma’am. Things are cramped most places on the Legendary, and there was no way we could clear the hangars.”

“Ah.” Brooke supposed that made sense.

Pity, she’d wanted to see the training in progress.

Ah well, the Socrates is within range of a real time link, and only a few minutes away by shuttle if we get the time in the next system.

“Very good.” She nodded after a moment. “And we are on course to jump?”

“Already have people at jump stations, ma’am, we were just waiting on you.”

“Well then let’s not keep things up any longer,” she said, nodding to the lift. “Shall we?”

“Yes, ma’am. After you.”

The two officers made their way to the lift and were quickly gone from the nearly deserted hangar deck.

*****

The jump alarm had sounded a few minutes earlier, so Sorilla had marched her unit back into the hangar deck they were using for maintenance and diagnostics and gotten everyone parked and the machines tied down. Despite her annoyance with Bean, she was far from unsatisfied with the first training session. Most of the men were experienced power suit operators, and that required a lot of knowledge and experience using implants.

If they were also a lot younger than her, well, they were used to learning new shit every day of the week and twice on Saturday, so she’d take that as a plus.

It would be nice if the irritating little puppies would stop leering at me when they think I’m not looking, though. Honestly, they should know better. Implants record everything, whether you notice it or not. It’s just bad form to give your superior that much blackmail material on you.

After checking all the machines, Sorilla paused to give hers a last glance over and then patted the armor-shod leg somewhat fondly before heading out.

For all her earlier intransigence, she had to admit that she was growing to like the big clunker. There was something primal about when everything connected just right and she
was
the machine. So far she’d only managed it for a few tantalizing seconds at a shot, if that, but the view of what could be was enough to get her to come back for more.

“You done in here, Lieutenant?”

Sorilla glanced back to see one of the Socrates’s workmen at the door to the hangar and nodded. “Coming right out, Doug.”

“All right, we’re going to seal up the room for jump.”

Sorilla thunked the big machine once, bare fisted, then walked out while the worker held the door for her. She didn’t want to be standing around in the open during a jump. She made it to the lifts and caught the last one out of the cargo deck, heading north to the command and habitation areas, but her mind was still on the mission before her.

She’d received the brief on the alien ships, as best they were able to reconstruct them after TF-5 was finished blowing them to hell and gone, and was almost finished finalizing the sims she was going to use to train her team on the entry plan.

Normally she’d prefer as much as six months just to train on mission-specific items, to say nothing on new equipment familiarization, but this time she estimated that she’d be lucky to get one. It depended on how long it took them to find an enemy ship that matched their shopping list, and assumed that they didn’t get embroiled in a full fleet action first.

I think I’m going to be sick, and we haven’t even jumped yet,
she thought darkly.
I should have stayed a sergeant.

*****

On the bridge of the Socrates, Alexi looked over the status reports with no small satisfaction. His ship was fresh out of a major refit and everything appeared to be in operating order and running as smoothly as he could hope.

“Is everyone in their assigned locations?” he asked, glancing up.

“Yes, sir, Captain. All decks check clear and ready for jump.”

“Signal the fleet, we are ready to jump.”

“Signal sent…uh…Legendary has issued a standby command, sir. The Spirit is tracking down an intermittent fault in their gravity system.”

Alexi nodded wearily. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. The Socrates may have been fresh from a refit, but it was a proven hull and solid as the day it was built. The other ships, aside from the one other Explorer Class with them, were all fresh paint and shiny circuits. He would have been shocked had there not been issue.

“ETA?” he asked.

“At least two hours.”

Alexi sighed, but smiled and nodded. “Understood. I’ll be back in an hour. Need some coffee, yes?”

“Yes, sir, we’ve got things here.”

“Never a doubt entered my thoughts,” he said, walking off the bridge.

*****

Sorilla settled into the lounge area of the ship, a large space by military standards and far more comfortable than she was used to. It had a nice view as well, though not out into space. Of course, views of deep space were generally about as dull as you got. No, this area looked out over the massive expanse of the deep and empty cargo deck of the ship.

All the gantries were retracted off to the side, lending it an open industrial look that was punctuated by the massive vertical gardens that hung along the entire inside of the ship. Unlike military ships, which depended on industrial scrubbers to regenerate oxygen content and remove carbon from the air, the Socrates had gone the opposite route. Aeroponic gardens with fast-growing crops to provide food and air, efficient and effective, but largely not something a military vessel could or would spare the space for.

I bet the crews of Valkyrie are happy to have the Socrates and the Newton along for this run, though. These gardens could feed a small city I’d bet.

Most of the food would be recycled, of course, but there would be plenty to spare for the plates of sailors and soldiers who were used to eating everything but fresh on an extended run.

She took a sip of a drink, just pure water for the moment, and looked out at the vegetation. The jump had been postponed. She didn’t know why, but it wasn’t her affair either. For now, she’d just relax and try to enjoy the ride.

There was a minor commotion at the far end of the room, a few people waving or saluting…though if the latter, they were the sloppiest salutes she’d seen in a long time. Either was possible on a civilian ship, she supposed, but it was enough to catch her attention.

The captain of the Socrates had stepped in; she recognized him from the time she’d seen the man when she hitched a ride back to Earth from Hayden the first time around. He was an impressive sort, she’d decided that back then, and nothing had happened recently to change her mind. She’d gotten a peak at his jacket while she was convalescing from that mission, and the mission review by his military second-in-command summed him up by simply calling him a Sierra Hotel Captain.

That was because the words “Shit Hot” didn’t belong in official reports.

Alexi Petronov was a tall man, even for the times, almost six and half feet. He was also gym-fit to the point of perfection, something not uncommon with spacers, in her experience. Men and women from the pre-Terra days didn’t have gravity and had to work out near constantly if they wanted to stay flight certified. If you didn’t, you’d lose bone mass quick and be taken off active duty permanently, even with the miracles of modern medicine.

That problem was probably in the past, so Sorilla idly wondered if the ultra-fit standard would eventually drop or not.

She hoped not, a hint of a smile on her lips as she watched the captain taking a few moments with each of his crew on his way to the cafeteria counter.

She’d never been a particularly active party girl, nor had she ever gone through the boy crazy stage as a teen, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate a hard body when she saw one, and Alexi Petronov was all kinds of hard.

*****

Alexi looked around the lounge. It was fuller than normal because they were basically in a holding pattern around the jump point and no one had anywhere better to be for the time being. He took his time as he made his way to the counter to get a cup of coffee, speaking with several people he’d not seen a lot of since before the started refit.

His crew were all long-term veterans of the Solari Space Agency, and later the Solari Organization as a whole, most of them conscientious objectors like himself who didn’t like to fight. That didn’t mean any of them were cowards. When it came time to liberate Hayden, they all stood with him as the military armed his ship. They served through a battle that had to be fought, but that was where they drew the line.

He and his crew were not military, and had no intention of ever becoming military.

Sometimes, however, they were willing to help the military when things got rough.

Speaking of military.
He noticed that the lieutenant was watching him from the far corner. Her eyes were dark but they held a glint of more than just intelligence. He knew intelligence when he saw it, he was around it enough to have gotten used to recognizing it in the way a person held themself. This one had something more.

He retrieved his coffee and cradled it thoughtfully for a moment before he set off and crossed the room to where the lone military officer sat.

“Lieutenant.” He nodded to her when he came to a stop by her booth.

“Captain.” She half smiled back, her fingers coming up in a salute that wasn’t quite casual but neither was it quite military perfect.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing to the seat.

“It’s your ship, Captain, enjoy.”

Alexi sat down, looking her over as she unabashedly returned the favor. He broke eye contact first, glancing around the lounge.

“You came here alone.”

“So I did. My squad is getting to know each other. I figured I’d let them without the boss looking over their shoulder.”

“Ah, yes, that makes sense.” He nodded, taking a sip of his coffee, “Tell me, what do you think of my Socrates?”

“She’s changed a lot since the last time I was aboard her,” Sorilla answered simply.

“Da, for the better, I hope…” Alexi trailed off. “I do not recall you. You’ve been on the Socrates before?”

“One way trip. Hayden to Earth.” Sorilla smiled. “I was drugged most of the run, didn’t get out of the cabin much.”

Alexi stared for a moment, thinking furiously. Normally he knew every face that stepped on his ship, past and present, but he found himself annoyingly blank here. “From the liberation of Hayden, I presume?”

Sorilla nodded simply, taking a drink while she smiled rather amusedly at his consternation.

“I must apologize,” he said finally. “I do not recall you.”

“I was a sergeant back then,” she said as she set down her water and extended a hand. “Sorilla Aida, sir, at your service.”

“Aida,” he whispered, nodding now as he took her hand and shook it firmly. Her hand was cool, but strong, he found. “Yes, now I recall. You were the survivor of the team they dropped in at the start.”