The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (5 page)

The Sadler was running dark.

“Look that that. We’ve never seen one like that before. What do you suppose it is? A kilometer long?” Bitte asked, voice hushed.

“One five,” Alder answered, eyes flicking to the range finder. “And it’s not a Ghoulie ship, looks like a capital ship belonging to the Deltas.”

“I thought the ones we already saw were their capital ships.”

“Apparently not.”

Ship after ship slowly moved past the Sadler, heading on course to the beta jump point, which would take them one jump closer to Hayden.

“No way we can slip past them. You know that, right, sir?” Bitte asked.

“I know. They’ve got everything on us. The Sadler couldn’t outrun them with a ten-hour lead from here,” Alder admitted through clenched teeth. “And if they see us, they’ll pop us like a zit.”

Bitte grimaced, but nodded in agreement. “So, what do we do?”

“If a battle group like this surprised TF-7, they’ll be savaged. We’ve got to do something.”

“We will. Just make sure to catalog every ship we scan and put in a file ready to dump to the beta point marker,” Alder said. “If they see us, we’ll have to transmit in a hurry.”

“Aye sir.”

West Point, NY

Sorilla settled down in a comfortable chair, all the lights but the one beside her turned off.

Dinner with Ton had been a lot of fun, and had things been a little different, it might have gone on beyond the meal. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the energy for even a one night stand at the moment, and the ring on Ton’s finger told her that he wouldn’t be up for it even if she did. Not if he was half the man she read him for at least.

Of all the things in her life, oddly, her sex life was probably the one thing that Sorilla had never really had a lot of success with. Oh, she’d had her flings and trysts in her younger years. When she was a tomboy teenager, she could get away with the tough girl image and still have something of a decent social life, but when she joined the Army and won the her beret, that changed.

Mostly it was her who changed, she knew. She had to work five times as hard as the men beside her to stand equal to them, and that didn’t leave a lot of energy or time for a relationship or a husband. Sorilla wasn’t complaining about the work, however. She accepted that as not only necessary but right and just.

She didn’t work that much harder because people looked down on her as a woman, or because there was some invisible chain holding her back because of her gender. It wasn’t that at all, which wasn’t to say that didn’t happen from time to time.

No, she worked five times as hard in order to qualify to the
same
standard as the men she worked with because
they
deserved it. The men she worked with deserved to know that the person coming to pull their ass out of a firefight didn’t qualify on some easier standard because of some twisted idea of fairness. She met and exceeded the men’s qualifying times because Sorillla Aida was no one’s weak link.

To do that, and then maintain that, however, had its price.

If she wanted kids, she’d have to give up her field duties, probably permanently. It was unlikely that she could conceive safely without dropping her training to almost civilian levels, and after more than a year of that, it wasn’t likely that she’d regain her fitness level. Not at her age. Men had it easy when it came to families, physically at least.

Of course, to have kids she’d need to find someone worth spending that kind of time with, and Sorilla wasn’t about to hold her breath. Even the best men were intimidated by someone who could break them in half, and that was before you factored in her training.

In the end, it was all a moot point.

She worked all day, every day. If she wasn’t in the gym, she was in the classroom…in her seat or at the screen. She spent her weekends in the field or the shoothouse, and her nights with her nose in a reader. She didn’t have time for a cat, let alone a man in her life.

She was 43 years old, not a young woman anymore, but not remotely old either. The average age people lived to on Earth now was better than a 180, and you could stay active almost that entire stretch. Someday she knew that she was going to have to choose a new career path, but for the moment, Sorilla had few regrets concerning her choices in life.

It was just that those few all seemed to converge on her on nights like this.

Sorilla pushed the thoughts back and picked up the manual she had to read for the next day.

Like everything else in her life, regrets were just one more tango to put down with extreme prejudice.

*****

SOLCOM Offices, Washington D.C.

“So?”

“I’d take her on this assignment, but I already told you that,” Captain Washington answered with a shrug. “The lady knows her job. Hell, she knows my job and probably the jobs of everyone else even remotely associated to her position, at least well enough to teach. She takes her job description seriously.”

Brigadier General Gregor Svboda snorted. “That’s part of the issue, Captain. No one is questioning her skill or experience. It’s her skillset that concerns me. She’s a schoolteacher who packs heat, but by and large we don’t need those in this war and you know it.”

Washington remained silent. He’d already said his peace and been ignored in his opinion.

“No one is going to deny that she was exactly what we needed on Hayden at the start of the war, but there aren’t many worlds where what she did would even have been possible, so her role as a Special Forces trainer is hardly a pressing one.” Svboda shrugged.

“As I said, I’d take her with me on TF-7 any time.”

The general glared over his paperwork at the captain, but Ton didn’t budge or flinch. Finally Svboda snorted and shook his head.

“You can’t have her, she’s spoken for.”

Ton blinked.

That was new, no one had mentioned that to him.

“Sir?”

“Admiral Brooke wants her for TF-V,” the general said. “They’ve been given a new directive, and it’s going to involve their operator contingent. I’m not cleared to tell you anything else.”

“Understood, sir.”

Svboda looked over his reports for a bit longer then waved to the Marine captain across the desk from him. “You may go, Captain. Thank you for your report.”

“Sir.”

*****

USV
Legendary
, Alamo Shipyards

The Legendary was the first of Task Force V’s ships, and Nadine found herself feeling like a bit of a ghost as she walked the corridors of the big ship. She wasn’t the only person on board, but as the main reactor had only just been activated, she was one of the first to set literal foot on the big ship.

Compared to previous ship classes, including the Cheyenne, the Terra Class ships were configured in an inverse design. On a Cheyenne Class ship, “up” was to the bow and “dow”’ was to the stern. This was because, when you accelerated, your inertia would press you back into the direction you were coming from, which was obviously the direction the engines were point
at
.

On the new Terra Class ships, like The Legendary, “up” was now toward the stern. “Down” was toward the new gravity singularity that rested in the bulbous orb that defaced the smooth prow of the ship. While she wasn’t cleared to know about how SOLCOM R&D came up with the new technology, beyond that it had been reverse engineered from captured alien tech, Nadine had done her reading and had a good idea how the system worked overall.

The singularity was computer controlled to vary from one gravity to over 800, precisely linked to The Legendary’s throttle controls. As the ship increased speed, the singularity would warp space-time at the same linear rate, pulling people “down” at the same rate the ship pushed them “up,” plus one gravity.

Balanced on a knife edge, with enough force to turn us to paste on the ceiling…or the floor, all depending on which system has a glitch first.

She couldn’t say that she liked how very thin the razor’s edge seemed to be, but honestly, it wasn’t all that different from the older classes of ships. In space, your life depended on everything working perfectly. Too little oxygen, you died; too much and you probably died. Hell, the old ships had more than enough thrust capability to turn their human cargo to crunchy bags of jelly, so the fact that the new ones could turn them to a smear on the deck or the ceiling really wasn’t that big a change.

Oddly, it was the layout of the ship that bothered her most.

It felt almost like an office building instead of a warship. There were personnel elevators that travelled up along the internal spine of the ship, the central thrust chamber. They never bothered with anything like that on the Cheyenne Class because you mostly just drifted where you wanted to go or you damned well stayed put. The Terra was a lot larger, however, and unlike a seafaring ship, all of its size was in “height.” There were skyscrapers on Earth with a lot fewer floors than The Legendary.

The lowest levels, closest to the thrust chamber’s exit ports, were reserved for ship’s stores and engineering sections. Above that were command levels, along with access to The Legendary’s three observation decks, and then came habitat, quarters, medical, and other various departments. Primary engineering was next, positioned close to the VASIMR hardline controls, and above that, after the thrust chamber ended, was the ship’s flight decks.

At the very top of the ship was gravity control, a third engineering section, and most of the forward scanner systems, as well as a good chunk of the weapon control lines.

The entire ship was built inside three-meter-thick, sun-forged meteor-iron hull, with a one-meter ceramic composite active armor system layered with synthetic armor sandwiching-shaped high-explosive charges designed to defeat any conceivable assault.

Any, save one.

Brooke was well aware that The Legendary, as awesome a ship as she was, would stand no more chance than a snowflake in the hot place if she were pitted against a Ghoulie Gravity Valve.

All that armor would only serve to make a brighter explosion to mark her passing.

R&D said that they had something in the works to help with that, but until it was tested in battle, Nadine was not about to put her trust in it. Until that time, her taskforce was going to be a moving target for that enemy weapon.

She was just thankful that they were now going to be a
much
faster moving target than ever before.

Now she just had to get a move on before she was late to her next meeting.

*****

“Admiral.” Major Sam Shepherd saluted automatically as Brooke entered the room.

“Room” was perhaps a misnomer, she supposed, as it was easily as large as the shuttle hangars on the old Cheyenne class, though those were considerably larger on the Terra Class ships. This was an assembly point for ground forces and special operations soldiers, and had to be large enough for their vehicles and equipment.

“Major,” she nodded, “as you were.”

Shepherd nodded, relaxing marginally as the admiral stepped past him to examine the equipment.

“Impressive,” she allowed after a moment.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “I realize it’s not much compared to a ship, but for the needs of the upcoming mission…”

“Yes, a ship would certainly be overkill,” she admitted with a twisted smile. “We’ve already hammered those ships to pieces and learned what we could. Time for a new approach.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam answered. “Uh, ma’am, when are we getting our operator contingent? TF-V will be operational in a few weeks, and it’ll take a while to get them familiar with these new systems. My Marines could handle the job if needs be, you understand, but I was told you wanted to use operators?”

“Yes. I have someone in mind for the squad,” Brooke answered. “We’ll be pulling her from her current station in a few days.”

“Her?” Sam blurted before his brain caught up with him, “No offense, ma’am.”

Shepherd didn’t have anything against women in the military. However, they were still quite rare in front line units, let alone operator units, and he was surprised.

“None taken, Major. I expect that Lieutenant Aida will be up to the job.” Brooke smiled thinly. “She’s been up to everything else that has been thrown her way.”

“Aida, ma’am?” Sam frowned. “The only Aida I know of is the master sergeant in the SF.”

“That’s her. She’s in OCS at West Point now. We’ve only left her there this long so she could give lectures on enemy tactics to as many ground force commanders as we could cycle through,” Brooke said. “As soon as Valkyrie goes active, she’s slated to command our operator contingent.”

“Didn’t know she was that good, only heard stories about her, ma’am.”

“Don’t believe a word of them, Major. I’ve heard them all myself, and not one of them comes close to the truth of what Aida has pulled off for us so far.”

“I see, ma’am.”

He didn’t, not really, but that was fine. He didn’t need to.

Brooke supposed that it was about time to call the former sergeant back to the fold, however. Valkyrie had a new mission brief, and soon they’d even have the ships with which to accomplish it.

*****

USV Barry Sadler

Unknown System

“That’s it, that’s the last of them,” Alder said after a long and tense wait in the darkened cockpit of the small ship. “Dump the data to the beta probe and tell it to jump for Hayden at best speed.”

“Aye, sir,” Chief Bitte said, shaking his head.

The pulsed signal went out in a series of redundant laser bursts, and they would keep transmitting the same signal over and over just in case some random event kept the first signal from being received. It would be several hours before the probe waiting at the beta point would get the message, but that would be several hours ahead of the alien fleet’s arrival, so there should be some time to space.

Not a lot, but some.

In the meantime, Alder opened the file and looked over the count they’d made.

There were at least a half dozen Ghoulie ships, their bulbous design unmistakable. None of these quite matched the more common designs they had on record, but that wasn’t his department. Someone in NAVINT would have that to worry about, he supposed.