The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (33 page)

He and his team cut the lines as he hit the deck and rolled to a stop, rifles out and covering the now-vacuum-filled shuttle bay.

“Clear!” Crow called from beside him.

“Clear.”

Ton nodded. “All clear. The shuttle bay is ours. Send the signal to the fleet.”

“You got it, boss,” Crow said, taking a step back.

“Seal the doors?” Cress asked.

“Negative. While we hold them open, the automatic locks will keep the enemy out, and the Marines need a place to land anyway. Hold the breach open,” Ton answered.

“Yes, sir.”

“Cress, take a man and start clearing those shuttles,” Ton ordered. “Be double careful of any that are sealed up. SOP says that they should be open while on ship, but we know that there were enemy troops in here.”

“Roger that.” Cress nodded, tagging Janks on the shoulder. “Come on, man. You’re with me.”

“Got your six.”

They broke off, heading for the line of shuttles with their weapons to their shoulders. Ton let them go. He had more things on his mind.

“America responds,” Crow told him. “Marines will launch in five.”

“Outstanding. All right, the rest of you,” Ton nodded to the group, “secure this area. Clear those shuttles. Crow, I want you to get hands on with the local systems. Get them under our control, local, not just via implant link.”

“On it.”

*****

USV America

The flight deck was roaring with activity, Marines weren’t known for subtlety at the best of times, and in fully armored BDAAS suits, they caused as much chaos as most enemy forces. Wrangling them onto the shuttles and getting them locked in was the job of the chief of the deck and her hands, and she did love her job.

“Stop pussyfooting with him, son,” she growled when one of her men was arguing with a Marine over something she didn’t give a shit about. “Put the little shit in his place and move on.”

All she had to do was glare at them for a minute before the Marine gave up and let himself get locked into place in the shuttle. Chief Siema just snorted and moved on. They were minutes away from a combat launch, and a lot of lives depended on their doing things right the first time.

The America’s five shuttles were loaded, packed stem to stern with Marine Bad Asses and enough firepower to fight a moderately sized war. The lights in the bay were all still green, though, so they had a few minutes at least…

A siren called and the light went yellow, causing the chief to swear.

“Move your arses! Launch in five! Move! Move! Move!”

They had to be loaded and the deck cleared in four minutes, otherwise they’d lose the launch window, and that
wasn’t
going to happen on her watch.

*****

“Keep firing! Hammer them!” Pete Green ordered as a rain of plasma bolts descended on his ship and the others in the squadron.

They were coming back in now, swinging wide as they vectored their thrust to put the task group into an orbit around the enemy ships. The America was shuddering now, bleeding atmosphere into space as plasma bolts found spots where their ceramic armor had already been blown away. The destruction was lighting up their damage control boards, but Green had no choice but to trust his people to handle that while he focused on keeping the battle itself on the course they all needed.

“Marines are go!”

Green nodded. “Launch shuttles!”

On the screens, they could see the shuttles explode out through the big bay doors, thrusters flaring as they pulled clear of the America. Beyond them, shuttles launched from the other ships of TF-7 as well. Green winced as a couple were blown apart by plasma bolts intended for the America, but they were small and fast targets so most of the shuttles got clear in time.

That wasn’t to say that the humans were on a one-sided beating. Not even remotely.

Hammers had struck deep in the enemy formation, tearing through armor and hulls with equal ease. He knew that his enemies were hurting, some far more than his own ships, because the human-designed ships were bigger and thicker and more able to absorb damage.

It was going to be a tight battle, but no matter who won, Green intended to be sure that this particular group wouldn’t be in any shape to move against Hayden or beyond.

*****

Parath hissed as one of his ships took multiple strikes along the dorsal vents, crippling them. They were fighting at a parity, and while his ships had better weapons in terms of firing rates, the enemy projectiles were not to be underestimated as they struck with far more force than their kinetic energy calculations would indicate.

“Watch your dorsal flank,” he snarled, stepping forward and looking over the battle schematics. “Move the Unrelenting into position to cover them or we’ll lose the Gigantic!”

The Raptor Unrelenting moved into position, covering the weak position over the Gigantic Eternal, but in order to do so, it took a pair of heavy strikes that got through their defensive screens and was already bleeding atmosphere into space at a dangerous rate.

Parath swore. “Break from the alien ship! We need to move, they have us pinned against it!”

“But, Master…we’ll lose the ship, its intelligence value…”

“They won’t destroy their
own
ship! It will be here when we finish,” Parath growled. “Break formation! Move to attack speeds and engage the enemy on
our
terms.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Master! There’s something you need to see!”

Parath groaned. Anything he needed to see right at that moment was nothing he
wanted
to see. He headed over to the speaker, a Pari on the long-range scanners. “What is it?”

“Multiple smaller craft have left the main contingent of the enemy, Master.”

Parath hissed. He didn’t even need to look at the telemetry feed to know what that meant, though he confirmed it quickly anyway.

“This is Master Parath,” he called on the open com to the captured ships. “Stand yourselves ready to repel assaulters. The enemy have launched assault craft.”

*****

Sentinel Prime Kris pounded on the sealed doors, snarling as the announcement came over his commlink and announced the impending assault.

He had no doubt where it was coming from, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it closed up in a small metal box with only his sidearm. “Get this lift moving! Or the doors opened…!”

The controller on the other side of the link mumbled some helpless reply, but it was as useless as he was, and Kris didn’t bother to listen. He drew his sidearm, considering the weapon for a long moment as he looked at the doors.

I cannot use it yet, but perhaps…when the ship bay is sealed and re-pressurized…

It would be a risk, that he knew well, but it may well be a worthy one.

He had Sentinels on the other side, assuming any survived the decompression. Lucians were tough, but that would kill them just as dead as it would most species, though they might last a shade longer. All species need to breathe, be it one gas or another. There were ships inside, though, and those could be sealed.

If the warning got out in time. I just don’t know…

Kris detested, more than anything, being helpless. And what was he here and now? As helpless as a Ross’El babe in the wilds without his toys.

He roared at the ceiling as he waited for a sign, for some hint that he could finally
do
something.

*****

“Down! Down! Down!” Ton yelled as a burst of fire erupted from one of the shuttles, tearing into the deck as his team dove clear.

“It’s a Charlie!” Cress yelled, rolling along the deck and bringing his weapon to bear.

The EM rifles opened fire, tearing into the shuttle the fire had come from, eerily silent into the vacuum of the deck. Sparks and shards of shuttle aluminum filled the air as the team converged on it with weapons blazing.

Ton got a glimpse of the figure standing in the walkway of the shuttle with nothing but his uniform and what appeared to be a breather mask from the shuttle’s stores.

Unreal. Tough bastard.

“He’s got the ramp covered, we can’t get a clean shot without him blowing our frickin’ heads off!” Cress swore from where he’d scrambled to cover behind a cargo truck.

“Keep his attention,” Ton ordered, circling around to the far side of the craft.

The shuttles were intended to be boarded from the rear ramp, yes, but that wasn’t the only way in or out. They were also assault craft, and they had to put a lot of soldiers into the field in very little time, plus there were two emergency hatches in the front cockpit for the pilots.

Ton headed for one of those.

It was up high, of course, but he had no trouble jumping up to the latch using his powered armor. The whole thing was evacuated, so there was no wail of an emergency alarm to contend with when he popped the hatch and pulled himself into the shuttle. He tumbled into the cockpit, kicking himself loose of the large acceleration bolster, and scrambled to his feet as he got his rifle up and to his shoulder.

“I’m in the cockpit, keep them focused on you while I move up behind them,” he sent, using a pulse transmission.

He couldn’t hear it, but Ton was well aware when the level of fire exploded in intensity ahead of him as it lit up on his HUD like a five-alarm fire. He edged the door from the cockpit to the crew and passenger section open and slipped out. Stairs led down to the ramp deck, but Ton paused to scan the passenger seats, clearing them before he began down.

In a crouch, he descended the stairs until he got a bead on the Charlie that was still firing out into the shuttle bay. Ton remembered Sorilla’s reports on the muscular grey aliens, and he pushed his rifle’s power all the way up to the highest setting as he steadied the front sight and squeezed the trigger.

The alien’s head exploded from the force of the explosive round, and he fell forward to the ramp and slid down out of the shuttle as Ton finished making his way down the stairs and began to clear the area.

“One Charlie down. Negative contact on others. Anyone have anything different?”

“Negative,” Cress said. “We’ve got nothing out here.”

“All right,” Ton said as he moved forward. “Clear. Check the other shuttles.”

“Roger that.”

“Boss,” Crow spoke up.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“The Marines are landing.”

Ton stepped down the landing plank and peeked out to see the first of the assault shuttles sweep into the deck, flying on retro-thrusters and baking the floor. It opened hatches on either side of the big bird as it hovered, and Marine Bad Ass units jumped clear to the deck before the shuttle turned slowly around and flew back out.

Behind it, shuttle two was already making its entry.

“Semper Fi,” Major Washington said with a grin. “Let’s take back our ship.”

Unnamed solar system

Sorilla rolled as she felt her Titan being slammed to the ground, sweeping the feet of the Golem as she did, and the pair wound up in a tangled mess on the floor of the ship as the deafening roar of portable artillery rent the air itself asunder.

Her squad had stepped back as the forms jumped down from above them, bringing their weapons up high to avoid hitting her, and then opened fire with the big fifty-millimeter rifled cannons they carried. Two of the Golems were blown back and hit the ground in a dead sprawl, not moving again, while Sorilla wrestled in close with the one that had landed on her.

“Behind us!”

“Cover the flanks!”

Artillery fire erupted again as they opened fire on the group coming up behind them, and return blasts from gravity pulse weapons turned the halls into a very inhospitable place for anyone not doffed in layers of thick and sturdy armor.

A pulse blast took a Titan in the chest, blowing the eighty-ton machine back in a spiral tumble as it hit the ground with enough force to dent both floor and armor. The pilot, Sr. Master Chief Carson, struggled back to his knees, and the big robot shook its head as he tried to clear his own foggy brains.

“Chief! You okay?”

“Got my bell rung, I’ll live. Keep us covered!”

Sorilla heard all that as she struggled with the surprisingly agile Golem pinning her down. She twisted, getting one of the legs of her Titan against the wall, and then kicked. Her machine slid out from underneath the Golem, sending sparks flying as she truly and utterly destroyed the pain, but also pitching her opponent to the ground as she rolled and started to get to her feet. It grabbed her by the leg and yanked, sending Sorilla face first to the ground with a bang that resounded both through the air and through her bones.

She twisted over onto her back, cocking her Titan’s “head” down so she could get a good look at the Golem holding her. She snarled, kicking it with enough force to bring down a building, but it doggedly held on.

“Fine,” Sorilla snarled. “Let’s play this your way.”

She pushed off the ground, twisting around and rolling on top of the Golem, getting it locked between her legs as she drew a five-foot-long carbon blade from her Titan’s thigh sheath and slammed it down through the Golem’s throat.

It jerked under her, but she held on, then it finally slumped back and stopped moving. Sorilla snarled, twisting the blade and decapitating the big beast. She slipped the blade back into its sheath as she glanced around, evaluating the situation. Retrieving her rifle, Sorilla opened a channel to the others.

“Fall back to me! The objective is this way. Keep firing!”

Her squad fell back by the numbers, two firing as the others picked Carson’s Titan up and put him on his feet before the three fell back to her position. Then they took up firing positions and covered the next two as they leapfrogged into position.

“If I’m reading this right, they hesitated just a minute too long to drop the boom on us!” Sorilla yelled over the booming of her own gun, audible even through the thick armor of her machine. “Carson, is your Titan okay?”

“Functional, El-Tee. I’ve got warning lights all across the board though.”

“Fine. You’re with me. Everyone else, cover us!”