Valkyrie Burning (Warrior's Wings Book Three) (31 page)

The overpressure wave was the least of her worries in this scenario, though the most dangerous to Jerry.

Jerry.

Sorilla forced her eyes to open, only to be greeted by blackness. She grunted and tried to toggle her HUD to active state, but it wouldn’t respond. A request for diagnostics resulted in a similar lack of results.

She tried to move, found that she could manage that much at least, and slowly reached up to pop the seal on her helm. When it broke easily, she knew that she was in for some trouble. The magnetic seals would only open automatically like that when the armor was completely without power. It was a safety measure so that you couldn’t be locked inside an unpowered suit. She had been quite careful to check the charge before she left the plateau, however, which meant that her systems were torn up pretty badly.

She grunted, pulling the helm off her head, and looked around as she blinked and tried to keep the dust out of her face and eyes.

Whoa.

Calling a kinetic strike down on her position seemed like a good plan at the time. Well, to be fair, it seemed like the only plan at the time, but now she was wondering if maybe she shouldn’t have thought a little harder.

The jungle was all but leveled around her. Trees toppled around and on her position like a Native American teepee, the strikes having hit all around her position with pinpoint accuracy. In the air there was so much dust that it reminded her of a Haboob that had once washed over her in the middle east.

Pained, she looked down and cleared the dust and debris from where Jerry was still curled up. She didn’t have her armor systems to tell her his state, but an eye to his chest showed movement, so he’d survived the overpressure of the strikes.

Not as insane as it sounded on the surface, she knew. Any kind of barrier to baffle and slow the wave would reduce the effect significantly, and they had massive trees and a dirt wall between them and the strikes. She patted his shoulder as she pushed herself up to her knees, looking around at the devastation.

If we lived, maybe some of them did too.

Sorilla didn’t see her rifle, or even the alien weapon, so she drew her OPCOM MS-50 from its holster and then reached down and pulled Jerry’s from his body as well before climbing to her feet and starting to survey the area.

Damn, I hope we got them all this time.

Without power, her armor was weighing her down, and she felt every motion like she was moving through water or molasses.

Should have packed a change of clothes,
she thought dryly as she forced herself to move.
Thank god this stuff is built as lightly as it is, or I’d be a frigging park statue.

“Liberation, Aida,” she said tiredly, using her implants instead of her armor systems.

There was a brief pause before a voice came back, sounding oddly distracted.

“Aida, Liberation. Liberation is unable to interact. Contact Hayden COMCEN.”

The signal cut off rather rudely in her opinion.

“Whatever,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “Hayden COMCEN, this is Aida.”

“Aida? Go for COMCEN.”

“Need medical evac for Pathfinder Reed and myself.”

“Roger. What is your sitrep?”

“Local area is quiet, will begin survey to ensure it stays that way.”

“Roger. Medical teams will be dispatched as soon as we deal with a priority crisis.”

Sorilla groaned but didn’t snap at the voice. She didn’t have the energy, “Roger. Please expedite. Pathfinder Reed needs medical care, ASAP.”

“Understood.”

Another channel went dead in a hurry, leaving her to wonder what else was going on that she wasn’t aware of. It didn’t matter for the moment, however, so she put it out of her thoughts. The area seemed quiet, in that eerie way that things always were after a storm or an explosion. Nothing was moving, no insects, no birds, nothing but her and the slowly falling dust.

She looked over her shoulder to where Reed was curled up.

“Hold tight for a bit longer, Jer. Help is coming,” she said, not knowing if he could hear her.

Her steps were sluggish as she moved through the fallen trees and flattened foliage of this particular corner of Hayden’s jungle. She imagined that she was moving like a knight of old, though her armor was hardly shining at the best of times. With a pistol in each hand, Sorilla surveyed the area until she felt her tensions calm.

Unlikely any of them survived. More of a miracle that we did than I’d like to guess.

She shook her head, freeing her hair from under the collar of her armor, and took a deep breath.

“You know, Jer,” she said as she walked back to her fallen comrade, “one day I’d like to visit Hayden without free falling to the surface and fighting a few desperate battles. I’m starting to think that this place doesn’t have any peace to be found for love or money.”

She planted a boot on a toppled trunk and leaned into it, taking another deep breath. Moving around in unpowered armor was going to wear her out in a hurry. Below her, Jerry hadn’t moved, but she could still see painful breaths lifting and lowering his chest. It seemed as strong as when she’d woken, but without her armor and its scanner suite she had no way to be sure.

She hoped the medical crews got out there in a hurry, otherwise there’s be no reason for them to come at all.

Her eyes were scanning the skies from where she was standing when a hammer blow struck her between the shoulder blades, driving her to the ground with a violence as bone-jarring as it was unexpected.

*****

Hayden COMCEN

“What do you
mean
there’s
slack
in the tether?” Grange demanded, rather too loudly he realized a moment after he said it. The lieutenant commander turned away from the staring eyes of his senior officers and non-coms, hurriedly rushing outside to look up at the sky above him.

The black thread to the skies looked normal, best he could tell.

“It looks fine from here,” he said over the comm. “Alright, fine. I’ll be right there.”

Making his way down to the anchor point took only a couple minutes, but even before he got there he thought he was seeing a faint bow in the thread.

Have to be imagining it.

He hoped that was the case.

Once he got in close enough to see the tether at the anchor point, however, he knew that he wasn’t. Slack was one word to describe it, another would be to say that the tether was beginning to pool on the anchor like a string whose balloon had just been popped.

Oh lord. The station!

“I see it,” he growled. “Grange out.”

A tap on his comm linked him into the command channels. “Liberation! Liberation! This is Lt. Commander Grange.”

“We’re a little busy here, Commander.”

“Thank god you’re still there! Is the station dropping in orbit?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well
what
exactly?” he demanded. “We’re seeing a frightening change in the tether down here.”

“We’re moving to a higher orbit, Grange. The tether has been cut,” General Kane’s voice cut in over the system. “Now, see to your own affairs and leave my people alone. You have
no
clue the chaos we’re dealing with up here.”

The line cut, leaving Grange standing in the middle of the street, staring up at the sky and wondering what the ever living hell was going on.

Hayden Jungle

He didn’t know how it came to pass that he’d survived.

The mass movers had torn the planet apart around him, but it seemed that they’d been targeted around the enemy’s location and not directly down on his head. Kris knew he’d been closer to the enemy than any of his Lucians, but even so, it was a miracle that anything had survived the bombardment.

When he managed to crawl out of the tangle of trees and dirt that had all but buried him, he’d been honestly appalled to find the enemy Sentinel standing there like nothing had seemingly occurred.

The infernal piece of work had even the gall to remove his helmet, standing at ease over the annihilation of the Lucian force. A rage burnt inside him, one Kris had never felt and never believed he could feel. As a Lucian and a Sentinel, he’d learned to control his anger a long time past, and he knew that he was losing it on one level, but he didn’t care.

He charged, having lost his weapon in the strike, and struck the alien to the ground from behind. He stood over the soldier, glaring down at him.

“You didn’t get us all!” he snarled. “You can’t turn your back on a Lucian until you
know
he’s dead!”

*****

The ringing in her ears was noticeably worse now.

Sorilla groaned, twisting painfully and slowly as she turned to see one of the tough grey bastards standing over her. He was grunting and growling something, presumably yelling at her she supposed, though it was possible he was just in a crap load of pain.

Yeah, not buying that one.

She shook her head, then twisted her upper body as quickly as she could to bring her guns to bear.

Apparently he was waiting for that, however, and was upon her like a bolt of lightning. A foot slammed her right hand to the ground while another kicked Jerry’s pistol from her left. The growling and grunting, followed by what might possibly have been a laugh, continued as he pinned her hand to the ground and snarled down at her.

“You’re so damn lucky my armor is dead, you grey prick,” she spat up at him.

He may not have understood what she said, but Sorilla suspected that he got the tone when he leaned down and hammered a fist into her mid-section. The armor, though dead, absorbed the biggest part of the force, but for all that she still felt it and had to struggle to keep the air in her lungs.

She briefly wondered if he’d targeted her diaphragm intentionally, with the plan to knock the air from her. If so, they knew a lot more about human physiology than she was happy with at that juncture.

Fuck it. Question for another time.

Sorilla lunged up, grabbing his uniform with her left hand as she pulled herself up closer to him.

“Oh, guess what?” she grinned, blood tracing a red line across her teeth. “I don’t need my armor to kick your ass!”

She swept his feet, using him as leverage. Despite being sluggish in unpowered armor, once she got moving, the armor provided more than enough mass to make the move effective, and with her holding him in place, the alien’s feet came out from under him as she twisted and pulled.

The shift jerked the alien off its feet and she rolled over on top, fighting to break her right hand free even as he clearly showed no intention of letting her gain control over her metalstorm pistol. Frustrated, Sorilla drove her knee into his midsection with as much force as she could muster, but was disappointed to find it had little effect.

He swung at her face, forcing her to let his uniform go and block the blow on her forearm. Instinct took over and Sorilla slammed her head into his face, forgetting for the moment that she wasn’t wearing her helm.

“Ohhh…bad idea,” she groaned, eyes crossing slightly as she pulled back.

Thankfully she’d remembered her technique and didn’t just try slamming her face into his, as without her helm that would have ended far worse for her, she suspected. As it stood, there was a trickle of what she assumed was the alien’s blood running down its face, though, again, she didn’t perceive any real effect by his actions.

His teeth were really white, but had a dullness to them that a portion of her brain fixated on until he hammered another blow in against her blocking arm and lunged over in a roll that brought him on top of her.

I think I might have a concussion.

She yanked in the direction of the roll and sent the two of them tumbling down the small hill, away from Reed’s position. They bounced off rocks and tree trunks as they rolled, hammering each other with knees and fists as they went. Sorilla lost the metalstorm pistol with a clatter as her hand smashed into a tree, but managed to wrench herself loose in the same impact and curl her legs up between herself and the alien.

She kicked out with all her strength as the tumble brought the alien on top, screaming with exertion as she fought his mass and the dead weight of her own armor, and managed to send him on a short flight that ended with an ugly impact on a toppled tree. Sorilla rolled to her feet from there, sliding until she steadied herself on another trunk and found that he had already recovered his own footing.

They faced each other across a strewn field of shattered and fallen logs, dirt, and dust. Sorilla slowly lifted her arm, wiping her face on the hard textured surface of her armor-covered arm. She could see the dark stain of blood on her armor, but ignored it. She wasn’t hurt bad enough to slow her half as much as the armor itself already was, so she had other things to worry about. The armor was a serious problem, however. With it slowing her down she had no speed and no strength behind her blows. Unfortunately, there was only one way around that, and it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Too bad he’s not human, I’d get a psychological edge for this for sure,
she thought dryly as she brought her hand down to her shoulder and broke the magnetic seals on her armor. A shrug dropped her chest and back plate away, the gel inside sucking at her skin as the armor slowly fell off and hit the ground with an audible thud. Losing the armor was a gamble, sacrificing protection for speed, but it was one she was willing to take.

Feeling lighter already, Sorilla broke the seals on the armor of her upper left arm and shucked that off as well but was forestalled doing more when the alien moved. He was fast, she had to give him that, his hand ducking behind his back as he came at her.

Sorilla tensed, dropping into a ready position as she tried to decide what she’d have to do next. Meet the assault or dive for cover? The gleam of light along a dull black blade told her what she was facing, though her mind didn’t quite believe it for a moment. Her body, however, knew the drill too well to be fooled.

Her hand dropped to her own combat knife as she shifted her body side on and pulled the carbon fiber blade from its sheathe. The edge of her blade gleamed to match that of her enemy’s, a diamond filament only a few molecules thick making the weapon one of the most dangerous close-in weapons ever devised by men.