Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (23 page)

The Identification Friend/Foe system was a very limited range radio challenge system integrated into all first world armor and arms, designed to limit friendly fire casualties on the battlefield. While not perfect, particularly when dealing with small arms fire in mid- to close-ranges, it was a fair site better than nothing when it came to at least keeping friendly munitions from detonating in your face.

“This brings us to the insertion phase of our mission.” Washington grimaced slightly. “For that part of the briefing, I’m turning things over to our jump master, Sergeant Aida. The floor is yours, Top.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sorilla said as they shifted their attention to her.

Since the conference room, like the rest of the Cheyenne, was in microgravity while the ship overtook the planet on a ballistic trajectory, she didn’t bother moving to a better position. Everyone just shifted around where they were until they could see her.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get the teams certified for their space wings,” she said, nodding to those who were still training. “However we probably wouldn’t have used that approach this time anyway, as it didn’t work out so well the last time.”

No one commented. They all knew she was speaking about her former team, and a silent moment of respect was offered up…and accepted.

“Instead, we’ll be using the Cheyenne’s OIS,” she said after the moment passed. “This isn’t a completely untested system, naturally, but as far as I’m aware, the number of people who’ve used it comes in well under forty. Luckily, I was one of the early guinea pigs when they first retrofitted the USS San Diego with a prototype OIS five years ago, so I can give you an idea of what is going to happen.

“First, the Cheyenne will hit atmo fast, hot, and explosively,” she said grimly. “It will
not
be a smooth ride, not for you, not for anyone on board. We’ll actually be accelerating into the atmosphere, because a pure ballistic trajectory is too easy to predict and we’d like to avoid being compressed into a ball the size of a marble before the whole thing turns into expanding gasses.”

A few people chuckled at that but mostly just nodded and paid attention. A couple were even taking notes.

“The increased hydrogen in the upper atmosphere is going to react explosively to the heat and shockwave, but the mass of the Cheyenne will keep most of that from being felt inside. We, on the other hand, won’t be inside for long,” she told them with wry humor. “We’re going to be ejected from the Cheyenne in ablative capsules at just over 80,000 feet, while moving in excess of eight times hypersonic velocities. Decel is going to kick like a mule when we leave the ship. We’re gonna get bruised, it’s going to hurt. Don’t get distracted. The first few seconds are critical after the ablative shield is blown off. You have to stabilize your fall quickly and bank into a hard dive. If you don’t, it’s possible to get blown up and into the backwash of the ship, and I’d like to take this time to remind you that the ship
will be
firing
its VASIMR drive at this time.”

She looked around the room, making sure they all understood the consequences of that. Normally, getting caught in the ship’s dirty air would be dangerous, certainly, but likely not fatal unless they were knocked unconscious by the buffeting forces and their chute failed to deploy automatically. Even then it was potentially survivable, as Sorilla herself have proven a couple years earlier on her first visit to Hayden.

Then, despite her chute having deployed, it had failed to completely open. She had fallen with only the drogue slowing her descent until she crashed into the canopy of the jungle. Her armor kept her from breaking bones and ultimately saved her life that day.

Getting thrown around in the radioactive heat of the Cheyenne’s VASIMR drive, however, was a fair site beyond armor specs. It would be a spectacular ride, but it would be their last.

“Once we’re clear of the backwash, we stay on a fast dive,” Sorilla said. “I’ll be in the lead, with Captain Washington following tight. Each of you will have your assigned position in the formation. Once we’re down into the lower atmosphere, where it’s thick enough for our control surfaces to get a real bite, we’ll pull out and glide to our landing zone. Is everyone clear?”

The group all nodded. At this point, it was really just standard operating procedure for them. Once they were clear of the ship, the whole thing became an advanced HAGLO (High Altitude, Glide to Low Opening) approach. Tricky, potentially deadly, but something they’d all done in past. Hell, many of them did it for fun.

They didn’t jump from a starship at 80,000 feet, but the principal was still there.

“Good. Once we’re down, things get fun.” She grinned.

Captain Washington nodded, speaking up. “Command of individual teams falls to your squad leader, while I will coordinate. We’ll come down in the area near the old colony site and hike back via separate routes until we cross paths with the ground forces’ patrols. Do not make contact. Pick up a patrol and tail them, keep watch for the aliens. If the patrol comes under attack, only intervene if you can get a clear vector to engage. Otherwise, your orders are to circle around, locate, and shadow the enemy back to their FOB. I’m not telling you to leave anyone out to dry, but don’t give away your positions unless you’re certain you can do some good for them. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Clear, sir.”

Washington nodded at the murmured responses. “From there, things get pretty clear cut, in theory at least. Find their FOB, acquire intel on the enemy forces, then begin harassing maneuvers. Booby trap their most-travelled areas, snipe them from extreme range, hell, if you can get an IED in their toilet, do it. These bastards no longer feel
safe
anywhere on Hayden soil, am I
clear
?”

“Yes, sir!”

*****

On the bridge of the Cheyenne, things were quiet, as everyone was either deeply focused on the approach to the planet or trying desperately to find something else to be deeply focused on. They knew that the strength of their current approach was its stealth, and if they were spotted, they’d probably only get a few seconds’ warning before everything went to hell. Which was why the captain ordered everyone into acceleration positions as soon as they were within twelve hours of Hayden.

Coming in quietly meant crossing Hayden’s orbit at one point and overtaking the planet from the sunward side across the system. They were using the gravity of the sun to start the deceleration, a maneuver that would be completed as they crossed Hayden’s lunar, orbit only to be reversed just before they hit Hayden’s atmosphere.

It was a complicated plan, involving several counterintuitive maneuvers that would hopefully keep the Cheyenne from becoming the latest victim of the enemy’s gravity tech.

For Captain Patrick Roberts, however, it all came down to one hope. He just prayed that they hadn’t already spotted the approach.

They knew too little about the enemy’s detection tech to be sure. In fact, Patrick was well aware that they knew far, far more about the enemy gravity tech than they did their targeting and detection systems.

All of which made the inbound flight to Hayden a nerve-wracking affair that was proving to test the mettle of the entire crew. Sometimes it was when all you had was the anticipation that everything seemed to weigh against you. He could feel the tension building as Hayden loomed in the distance, slowly changing from the blue-green disk to the familiar cloud-speckled globe of a life-bearing world.

“We’ll be crossing Hayden’s lunar orbit in fifteen minutes, sir.”

“All right.” He nodded. “So far, so good. Signal to all stations, standby for maneuvering.”

“Aye, sir, signaling to all stations,” the watch officer replied, murmuring quietly into her headset until she turned to look back at him. “All stations, standing at the ready, Captain.”

Patrick nodded to her but didn’t say anything as she turned back to her station. With the Cheyenne on a ballistic drop into Hayden, they were entering the most dangerous part of the approach. They were now well within the range of enemy gravity valves, and the time it would take to wind things up to full combat response level would like as not end them before they got started.

A few more minutes passed before the next report, and when it came, Patrick had to keep from jumping in place at the unexpected sound of someone’s voice.

“Hayden’s moon, approaching from portside aft.”

The Cheyenne’s rear cameras were put up on the screen, showing the dark of the moon, barely visible against the black of space, as the huge chunk of rock hurtled along toward them as it spun around Hayden. The lunar gravity pulled the Cheyenne back, slowing them more relative to Hayden as the moon continued to overtake them. At its closest pass, the moon’s surface was only a few thousand meters below the starship before it began to pull away from them, and the Cheyenne was slowed even more before it began its final free fall approach to Hayden.

Hayden’s moon was closer to the planet than Luna was to Earth, but the final approach was still going to be almost another day, even though the Cheyenne was still pushing more than twice the maximum speed of the Apollo moon shots. It was going to be a long, hard day and night for the crew of the Cheyenne, as they couldn’t unstrap without risking being broken against the bulkheads if the ship had to maneuver suddenly for any reason.

Once the moon’s gravity well was cleared and they were in final approach, however, Patrick took the chance to order a shift change. For the most part, people didn’t even bother moving; they just shifted responsibility over to another station and then settled in place to sleep, read, or just watch canned broadcasts from Earth. Service crews risked their lives to deliver coffee and meals, knowing that if the ship came under attack while they were floating around, they’d probably have only seconds to strap in. They knew at the same time, however, that the ship lived and breathed on its stomach, and a hungry or tired crew was one that would respond just an instant slower in a crisis.

Such was life on a warship in space. Mission elements once measured in minutes were now days or longer, and even delivering coffee was a potentially lethal occupation.

Patrick wasn’t so sure that he’d consider it to be progress, if all truth were told.

*****

Final armor checks took up the time between sleeping as they watched the clock count down in the back of their eyeballs, their implants fully unlocked from standby modes and now running at full combat capacity.

They didn’t run like that fulltime because the overclocked cores would burn out eventually, but when seconds counted, it was more important to get answers than save circuits. It was the difference between years of active lifespan and decades, on average, but the last thing any soldier wanted was to count on averages, because while you had high averages, you also had low ones. No one wanted to roll the dice and crap out.

Sorilla was suited up, fully linked in to her armor even while she was strapped into place inside the breakaway capsule as she waited to be ejected from the ship. Everything had been checked by hand before she suited up, and even now she was running diagnostics in the background as she waited with the others for the clock to end its count.

It was all nothing but make-work, though. Her suit was fine, her weapons were primed, and her kit was good to go. She’d personally checked the flight packs of every man on the teams, so she knew that there was nothing wrong with any of their kits.

Despite it all, though, she was running out of things to occupy her mind, and the surroundings were bringing back memories of another ship, another team.

They hadn’t spent as long on the ship that time, making their jump from well out beyond orbit and coming in unpowered on pure ballistic trajectories. Just over a day, all of it in armor that was blacked out by ablative spray on material designed to let them survive reentry. It was so thick that they couldn’t move, couldn’t do more than breathe and squirm while they waited for the atmosphere to burn the material off enough for them to break loose. Mere meters from her team the whole way in, yet unable to talk to them in their last hours because of radio silence.

She closed her eyes, killing her implants just as she wished she could kill her memories.

“Atmospheric entry in twenty minutes, VASIMR burn will commence in ten.” The captain’s voice woke her up just as the images were fading. “Op teams, standby for insert. I say again, ops teams, standby for insert.”

Sorilla wished she could stretch out a bit, work the kinks out of her muscles before the mission officially kicked off, but that wasn’t in the cards. Sometimes the ability to do literally nothing was the most valuable skill she’d picked up in the military. It was harder than it sounded, to be honest; muscles balked at that sort of treatment, but it had to be done so very often that, in certain professions, you either learned it or you washed out.

Sorilla damned well refused to wash out of anything she did.

*****

“VASIMR coming online!”

“Engine burn in thirty seconds!”

Admiral Nadine Brookes listened in on the bridge chatter as the Cheyenne prepared for the acceleration into the planet’s atmosphere. The most technically dangerous part of the insertion plan, atmospheric entry was always an exciting time for a starship.

Like the Los Angeles class before it, the Cheyenne class starship was most certainly
not
rated to land on a planet. It also wasn’t rated to fly in an atmosphere, which meant that the art of flying a starship through planetary atmosphere was a matter of learning to throw yourself, your ship, and your entire crew at the ground…and miss.

Of course, that left out the fact that you’d be on fire the whole way, with constant explosions in the kiloton range detonating all around you as the air itself tried to kill you.

The ceramic plates on the exterior armor were rated to stand a lot more than that, thankfully, and the thick nickel-iron hull made sure that human-forged starships, as tough as they were, could easily stand the forces at play. With the VASIMR providing the motive force to help them miss the ground, Nadine knew that the maneuver itself wasn’t the really dangerous part.