The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (26 page)

“Ride’s here, boys,” Ton said. “Merkur, head out and pop green smoke to mark the LZ.”

“You got it, boss.”

With the landing zone marked and the temporary prisoners under control, Ton and the rest of the team just had to wait, and not long for all that. The low rumble of the shuttle preceded its arrival—it had used aerobraking systems to drop it below supersonic—and the big lifting body airframe eased slowly into the sky over the enemy facility on vertical thrust as it settled itself down into the marked LZ.

Ton waved to the pilots as he got his team in order, then nodded to Merkur.

“Cut one loose.”

“If you say so.” Merkur didn’t sound happy about it, but he pulled his blade and made short work of the flexicuffs on the closest of the little grey aliens. As the Ghoulie stared at him, he didn’t know if it was impassive disdain or shock or something in between, Merkur tapped the side of its head with the flat of his blade. “Don’t even think of moving until we’re out of here, pal. I can cut someone else loose just as easy, and we don’t need all of you intact.”

The alien showed no hint that he’d even spoken, let alone been understood, but neither did it move, so Merkur fell back with the others as they backed to the shuttle while keeping the aliens covered the whole way.

“You rig the door?” Ton asked when it was only him and Merkur still on the dirt.

“Yes, sir. It’ll take a while to open, guaranteed.”

“Good, get on there, son,” Ton ordered, shoving Merkur up and into the shuttle.

The Marine took one last look at the still-smoking alien facility—it felt really weird leaving one even mostly intact—then pulled himself up into the door gunner spot as the shuttle fired its thrusters again. It lifted slowly away as he kept his rifle aimed at the unmoving aliens, resting it on the pivot mount there until they were well and clear of the area.

Only then did Ton pull himself fully into the shuttle and slide the door shut.

The lifting body craft flared its main thrusters and began the process of climbing to hypersonic speed so they could meet with the America in upper atmo.

*****

“Report from the ground squad, sir.”

“Give me the highlights, Lieutenant,” Pete Green said as he checked the telemetry and trajectory feeds for the America.

“Mission success, multiple casualties, however,” Lieutenant Piebald told him. “Bodies currently unrecovered.”

Green winced. “Note that, schedule a pickup mission as soon as we have time.”

“Yes, sir.”

At the moment they didn’t have time to hunt around for KIA or even MIA soldiers. If any of the team were still alive, they’d have to fend for themselves until the ships made it back this way. If the America didn’t make it back…well, then they’d have been dead and lost a long way from home either way, he supposed.

For now, however, the alien fleet had to be their primary concern.

Not to mention the Terra and the Canada.

They had two entire ships out there, not far from their current location if things hadn’t gone completely pear-shaped, and that meant that the America and TF-7 had a whole helluva lot on their plate at the moment.

“Copy that to the admiral,” Green said after a moment, “and set it to relay to any other Solari ships we come in contact with.”

“Aye, sir.”

At least he’d do his best to ensure that someone made it back to pick up the bodies, eventually. They were owed that much.

“High atmo coming up, sir.”

Green nodded, putting the fallen from his mind and turning to the task at hand. “Take us in, son. Keep speed steady, ready aerobraking systems.”

“Aerobraking, aye!”

The America shuddered as the thicker atmosphere began to pluck at her as she ducked into the planet’s grip, still moving far too fast to be useful. The ship had large aerobraking flaps that were shoved out, though, using the atmosphere to slow her speed as she continued deeper into a realm she was barely designed for and most certainly not suited for.

“Velocity decreasing, Captain.”

“Get us down to low hypersonic and send telemetry to the shuttle as soon as we clear the com blackout.”

“Aye, sir!”

Communications started to come back as the America slowed enough that the superheated plasma shockwave bled away, and Green noted with satisfaction that the Nevada was moving into position ahead of them.

Shuttles couldn’t carry enough fuel to make orbit, so they used ramjets to get up to hypersonic speed while the America came down to fetch them up. It was a delicate maneuver, a matter of feet the only difference between success and a terminal fall, but it was one they’d trained in heavily. The shuttle slipped into their path just ahead of the America as the mothership opened the shuttle bay doors and lowered the skyhook.

While the pilot of the shuttle struggled to hold steady, the America thundered over them just a few dozen feet away and caught the shuttle’s dorsal rack with the skyhook and plucked her right out of the sky. Even as the shuttle was being drawn up and into the big ship, the captain ordered the VASIMR engines to full thrust, and the USV America stood on her tail and made for the black of space from whence she came.

Green looked across the bridge and nodded, well satisfied. “Textbook, ladies and gentlemen. Absolutely textbook. My compliments.”

*****

Ton popped the seal on his helmet as he stepped out of the sterilization room, ignoring the men moving past him with portable sterilizing kits on their way to the shuttle. They had to get rid of bacteria and other organisms the team may have picked up while on the untested world, just as a basic safety procedure, but it was a pain in the ass to deal with.

“Major.”

Ton glanced over, nodding to the lieutenant who had spoken. “Yes?”

“Admiral wants to see you.”

“I’ll be up as soon as I’ve got the suit stink off me,” Ton told him. “Been locked in this thing for over a week.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll tell him.”

Ton pinned the young man with a cocked eyebrow until he squirmed. “You will?”

“That you’ll be up, sir. No need to mention suit stink.”

“Wise choice, son.” Ton grinned. “Go on then.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ton turned back to Crow and gestured to dismiss him. “Get the men fed, rested, and make sure you get some rack time yourself. I’ll be checking on the lot of you when the admiral’s done with me.”

“You got it, major.”

*****

Fairbairn was filling out reports when Ton stepped to the door and waited.

The admiral’s office was in the secured inner hull of the America, rather than the observation deck used as an alternate when not at general quarters. There was no incredible view, but it was considerably safer against conventional weapon strikes. Not such a huge deal when facing the Ghoulies, but some of the aliens used weapons that humans could classify as “conventional,” if one were to stretch the term.

“Come in, Major,” Fairbairn said after a moment, looking up from his work.

“Sir.” Ton stepped in, coming to attention in front of the desk.

“At ease, Marine.” Fairbairn gestured to a chair. “You may as well take a seat. This may take a while, and you make me tired just looking at you.”

Ton didn’t comment, he just accepted the seat and said a simple, “Thank you, sir.”

“I won’t bother asking about the mission, I’ll get that in your report,” Fairbairn said. “This is about your next mission.”

That got Ton’s interest, as if he weren’t already paying attention. “We have another target, Admiral?”

“Potentially.” Fairbairn nodded.

“I wasn’t aware of any other enemy outposts in this region. What’s the target?”

“The USV Terra.”

Ton’s eyes bulged. “Admiral?”

“When we hit the fleet target while you were on planet, a jump drone came through. It was taking the long way home, but we picked it up and queried the damn thing,” Fairbairn said. “According to the reports, the Terra may have been taken by the enemy, intact.”

Ton slumped slightly in his seat as he considered that.

“Damn, sir.”

He wished he could have been more eloquent, but there it was.

“Indeed.” The Admiral didn’t seem to mind, thankfully. “I need you to prep your team for an entry assault on the USV Terra. If we get indicators that the crew is still alive, your job will be to make entry, free as many of the crew as you can, and retake the ship while Task Force Seven provides fleet cover.”

“And if we don’t get those indicators, sir?”

Fairbairn looked at him coldly, “Then we destroy the Terra along with as many of the enemy ships as we can.”

USV Terra

Parath found himself enjoying the conversations with the aliens. They were an interesting and intelligent group. It was clear that the officers were all reasonably schooled in counter-interrogation techniques, which meant that it would take much longer to get useable intelligence from them, but that was fine.

That just meant that they had useable intelligence worth taking them time for. After all, you don’t waste that sort of training on someone who doesn’t have anything to hide.

He had saved the “captain” for last, gaining as much familiarity with the language and colloquialisms as he could before bringing up his counterpart. As expected, the man was reticent, but actually more sociable than his subordinates. This Captain Richmond was fully aware of what he was doing, and actually was using counter-intelligence techniques to get information from Parath.

That was fine. It was all the better, really, because in order to trick information out of Parath, the captain had to bait the conversation with interesting bits of intelligence to draw him in. It was a give and take that, in itself, was incredibly informative even before one considered the actual information gained.

They are not another race like the Ross, of that at least I can be sure. They’re young, barely in the darkness between worlds a few dozen intervals unless I miss my guess. Perhaps a little longer, but not by much. Pity for them to have encountered the Ross first of all Alliance races.

“Master Parath.”

“Yes, what it?” Parath was shaken from his thoughts by an approaching subordinate.

“Signals from the Glory, Master. The main fleet has arrived in system and is approaching our location. Master of Fleets wishes to speak with you.”

Parath nodded, rising to his feet. “I will return to the Glory to prepare. See to local security.”

“Yes, Master.”

*****

Pierce looked around his cell, eyeing the door darkly, but there was nothing much he could do. Once they began interrogations, and that was precisely what it was, the aliens had separated the officers they spoke to. Once taken out, he’d not seen them again, but it was fair to assume that they were in cells of their own, much like his.

Speaking of cells, his was a former bunk room for junior officers. The aliens had torn out the electronics, welded their own locks over the doors, and generally made things uncomfortable inside. Not that he blamed them, he’d have done better himself, but there it was.

What they
hadn’t
done, however, was anything to impede his implants.

That bugged the hell out of him, since he was still somewhat in contact with the ship. Not as useful as one might think, not since he’d had the memory cores torched, but the operating system was still partially intact and there was nothing wrong with the hardware.

So Pierce took a seat and linked into the local node, checking the options available. He could have wished for more, but he’d make do with what he had.

The main core was gone, so only local nodes and processors were still intact. The trick was recoding the software so they would talk more with each other rather than trying to run back to the main or alternate cores.

Distributed computing. Old school tech,
Pierce noted idly as he worked.

Unfortunately, not his specialty, but he could probably hum a few bars. You didn’t climb the ranks in SOLCOM without knowing your way around the innards of a computer system, after all. The closest local node was a life-support-monitoring station, checking the air for carbon dioxide levels as well as other trouble issues. It didn’t have much extraneous processing power, but he’d make do. In a pinch he supposed he could wipe the node and recode it completely, but he’d rather not mess with the system that was keeping him breathing.

Unfortunately, software coding via implants was long and tiresome work. His own suite really just let him select and input a single function at a time, and he wasn’t in practice of doing things that way, so it was slow going at best.

However, it wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

*****

The approach of the main fleet was an impressive, even awesome, sight to behold. Parath somewhat wished that he had remained on the…human ship and watched from their observation deck.

It probably wouldn’t have been terribly impressive, there, however. Biological eyes never developed with the intent or ability to see at stellar ranges. There was no biological advantage to that, so in space even the most adapted species had to settle for using instruments to increase their natural abilities.

“Master of Fleets is hailing, Master Parath.”

“Acknowledge, and inform him that I stand ready to transit to his ship,” Parath said calmly.

“Yes, Master.”

It only took a moment before the response came back, and the young Parithalian shifted nervously as she read it. “Uh, Master Parath…”

“Just say it.”

“Master of Fleets informs you that a virtual transmitted meeting will be sufficient, time is not to be wasted.”

“Understood,” Parath sighed. “Make the connection.”

“Yes, Master.”

It was a subtle insult, saying that Parath wasn’t worth wasting time on, given that the delay involved for a face-to-face meeting would be negligible in stellar terms, but there it was. Parath was well aware that his orders had been to remain ahead of the fleet, weakening the enemy forces and gathering information for the main fleet, but situations changed. He would make the same decision again.