Valkyrie Rising (Warrior's Wings Book Two) (6 page)

“Aye, sir… Message sent, Fleet confirms.”

“Good. Now we wait, I guess,” he said, a little put out, in all honesty.

It seemed that waiting was always part of a navy man’s life, but in space it was so much worse. Even in the middle of combat, it was all about waiting. Weapons could only cross intervening space just so fast, after all.

A harsh buzz snapped him out of his thoughts, and Patrick turned his head. “What’s that?”

He knew every alarm on his ship but found his mind clawing to identify that particular one.

“Minor flux on the accelerometers, sir. Probably an unmapped planetoid…”

Gravity alarm. That was it.

Patrick shook his head. “That wouldn’t set off the alarms!”

“That’s all we’re showing, Captain.”

“Correlate against the squadron’s sensors!”

He saw the brief moment of shocked embarrassment that told him he’d been dead on; the young woman had forgotten to check the Cheyenne’s readings against those of the rest of the squadron. If there was a significant variance, then it meant that they were in range of…

“Gravity event detected!”

“Fuck!” Patrick cursed. “On who?”

“It’s the Apache, sir! She’s accelerating out of formation!”

“Good! Godspeed to them,” he growled, accessing the short to midrange scanners as he tried to find the source of the attack. “Where the hell are you?”

“Shouldn’t we move, sir?”

“Negative!” he snapped. “We’re locked on a firing solution, and we only get one pass at this without screwing our plans to hell and back. Hold course.”

“A…aye, sir.”

On a side screen, he watched the Apache pull clear of their formation, accelerating at better than fourteen gravities in a bid to clear the area before the weapon could be brought fully to bear. They didn’t know why, but it was assumed that the enemy weapon had a positioning mode that locked onto a target before they applied the full force of their assault. It was that targeting mode that most members of the USF thought they were detecting before a ship was attacked.

“Gravity event! Apache again. They’re hit!”

His screen whited out for a moment, nuclear fission radiation causing the fail safes to kick in and shut down the cameras for a moment. Patrick grimaced, teeth clenched in anger and frustration.

“Two minutes to launch point!”

God, we’re sitting ducks,
he groaned. Two minutes was an eternity, an unreal length of time in the space of their lives to this point.

“Captain! The Apache, she’s still there!”

Patrick’s head snapped up, eyes falling on the screen that had now cleared up. Sure enough, the big ship was still there. Its acceleration was dead, but it was intact save for a large chunk torn off the rear end. He whistled in shock.

“Did she really just survive a hit from that thing?”

“First time we’ve pitted a Cheyenne class destroyer against the enemy weapon, Lieutenant,” Patrick answered. “Looks like they only clipped her, and her armor held against the nuclear reaction. She’s dead in space, however.”

“Shall I dispatch search and rescue?”

“Hell no,” he ordered instantly. “You want to help them, find me the source of the enemy shots!”

“Aye, sir.”

“Gravity event detected! Centered on the Sherwood Forest! She’s already accelerating out of formation!”

“Wish them luck and make sure the rail cannons are cleared to fire!” he ordered the tactical station, more to keep their minds off the shooting than anything else.

“Aye, Captain!”

“Where the hell are they?” he growled quietly, flipping through the close- to medium-range scans, looking for the enemy ship. It
had
to be there!

“Captain.”

He almost snapped until he recognized the admiral’s voice. “Yes, Admiral?”

“I’m not locating a ship either. It may be that there is no ship.”

“What? Then what…?”

“The facility on the planet is the only confirmed valve in-system. Continue with the firing plan as plotted.”

“Aye, ma’am,” he agreed easily enough, eyes still looking for the ship he felt had to be out there. They were so far out from the planet, well beyond any previous engagement range. Those attacks couldn’t be coming from the planet!

That said, his fire mission was the priority at this point in time, and he hadn’t intended to break off until and unless he had a clear idea of where he was breaking
to
.

“Sherwood has broken clear, no sign of damage!”

Patrick’s mind whirred. The fact that there was no actual attack supported that the attacks were coming from a long-range source. Closer in and they’d have been able to confirm the lock better and adjust their aim to track the accelerating ships.

Could the planet really be the source?
he wondered, mentally calculating the range and working out light-speed propagation in both directions as he tried to figure the numbers.

“Gravity event!” The alarms sounded as the call went out. “Centered on the Shilo, Captain!”

“Damn it!” Patrick cursed as the Shilo Warrior was forced to drop out of the formation, pulling away on a random tangent to confuse the enemy targeting.

Unfortunately, the Shilo had occupied a keyhole position in their attack plan, and its loss was going to open huge gaping holes in the squadron’s firing solution.

“Sir, HMS Hood is accelerating. Incoming contact from Captain Mackay!”

Patrick flipped open the com. “Captain.”

“Sir, the Hood stands ready to assume the Shilo’s position.”

“Slide on in then, Hood. Welcome to the front ranks.”

“Honor to be here, Captain,” Jane Mackay’s voice sounded confidently over the speakers as the HMS Hood took the Shilo’s position in the attack formation, shouldering the brunt of the other vessel’s firing orders in the process.

“Launch point in T-minus forty seconds, Captain.”

“Roger that,” Patrick gritted out, eyes on the accelerometer data, trying to pinpoint a pattern he could use to isolate where the shots were coming from.

He ticked down a count, mentally tallying how long it took the enemy to retask their weapon onto a new target. So far, it was almost half a minute between targeting impulses, which argued heavily in favor of the admiral’s hypothesis that the enemy weapon was located at extreme range…possibly even Hayden. If that were the case, though, it made things seriously dicey for assaulting a valve-defended world. He wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to guarantee a successful strike this time, though it seemed likely, all the same.

Kinetic Kill weapons weren’t nukes. They required reasonably accurate strikes to be effective. Close did count, but you still had to put them in the neighborhood. Unlike the enemy, who tossed around gravity-induced fission attacks like so many play toys, humans were loath to use nuclear weapons on a planet. It was culturally ingrained that you just didn’t do that and had been since the second World War.

“Gravity event detected, Captain!”

Patrick snapped his head up, a vile epithet on his lips. So damned close to the launch window.

“Target is the Cheyenne!”

Patrick winced. “Time to launch point?”

“Eight seconds!”

“Hold course and speed,” he ordered through clenched teeth.

“Captain?” The lieutenant half turned, face turning a pasty white as he stared in shocked disbelief.

“You have you orders. If we miss this window, we’ll just have to do this all over again!” Patrick snarled, opening the ship-wide. “All hands, all hands. Secure for full military power. I say again, secure for
full
military power!”

The clock ticked down as he finished the tally in his head and prayed that the admiral was right. If the valve was on the planet, they should have enough time, just.

“Three…two…one… Kilo Kilo launch away!”

“Get us out of here! Fifteen-g, emergency acceleration!” he snapped, throwing open the squadron channel. “Break! Break! Break!”

He and everyone else on the Cheyenne were slammed back into their bolsters as the VASIMR thrust opened up at fifteen gravities, throwing the Cheyenne forward through the fire. The squadron blasted along with them, each ship changing vector in a blossom break, each flying headlong into the black on their own vector as everyone onboard prayed for the best through the sounds of the deep grunts and panting they made as they tried desperately to keep blood from being pulled from their brains and causing them to black out.

*****

Fleet Kinetic Kill, or Kilo Kilo, weapons were really just twenty-kilogram steel bars launched from a series of high-velocity magnetic launchers built into the superstructure of the Cheyenne and Longbow class starships. Once launched, they fell into a ballistic trajectory, spiraling down the gravity well of the planet in this case, continuing to accelerate until they hit the atmosphere.

The fin-stabilized bars continued to fall, striking the surface with a variable force that could range from several dozen tons of TNT to upwards of almost a megaton of deep-penetrating power per bar.

The launch set from Taskforce Five entered Hayden atmosphere on schedule and slammed into the surface with roughly 800 kilotons of force each, delivering their energy deep into the ground at the target point with devastating effect on the local geology and anything that depended on it.

The impact was visible from orbit and for hundreds of miles in every direction around the alien facility. Seismic sensors on the other side of the planet itself registered the strikes shortly after they impacted, informing the Hayden civilians of the attack before radio transmissions from the squadron could, in fact, reach them.

*****

Patrick was slumped at his station, only the straps having kept him upright through the wrenching motion the Cheyenne had suffered moments after they’d opened up the VASIMR drive to full military power.

He groaned, throbbing pain informing him that he wasn’t dead yet, and stirred slowly in place. Faintly, through a cloud almost, he could hear others groaning and moving and slowly forced himself back to consciousness.

The ship wasn’t under acceleration, he could feel the effects of microgravity as he woke. But none of the alarms were blaring either, so they seemed to be more or less intact.

“Ship’s status,” he called out, croaked out, really.

There was a long pause before he heard a low moan turn into mumbled words from another station.

“Board is showing green and yellow, Cap… More details when I’m not seeing double.”

Patrick laughed painfully, turning it into a coughing fit that brought flecks of blood to his lips. “You do that. Anyone have any red on their boards?”

A slow chorus of negative responses left him feeling a lot better about the situation. No red lights meant that nothing was busted and no immediate risk to life and limb was evident. Well, as long as there wasn’t an alien ship out there waiting to smash them like a beer can, that was.

“Ok, ok,” he mumbled, slapping the quick release on his restraints and letting himself float free. “Enough sleeping on the job!”

He floated from one station to the next, shaking his bridge crew back to consciousness if they seemed to need it, and moved on when they were able to answer a few straight questions. They didn’t have time to mess around and needed to get the Cheyenne back to fighting form as quickly as they could.

“Coms! Get on the horn to the squadron, see if they’re all intact. Then contact the Apache and see what kind of shape they’re in. Goddamn it, Stew, wake the hell up. I need you on the detection gear. We may still have a bandit out there!” he growled, shaking the man awake.

“Mmm up!” the young man mumbled. “Ahm up!”

“Good, now uncross your eyes and get on the early warning systems.”

“Right…on it, Cap.”

With the bridge crew roused and rousing, Patrick floated back to his own station and opened a channel to the admiral.

“Admiral, bridge here,” he said then waited. “Admiral, this is the bridge. Come in. Please respond.”

He was about to head up there himself when he heard Nadine’s voice come weakly back.

“We’re intact, Captain. See to your ship.”

“Aye, ma’am. Good to know you’re up and about.”

“We’ll be about when the ship stops spinning, Captain.”

“That’s not the ship, Admiral.”

“Oh. Well, we’ll be about shortly then. Have medical send up something for motion sickness, would you?”

“On their way,” he said, concerned as he signed off and keyed over to medical.

“Medical here.”

“This is the captain. Send someone up to the admiralty deck. Admiral Brookes is complaining about motion sickness. I don’t know if it’s that simple or if she struck her head when we got belted around.”

“Right away, Captain.”

Patrick closed the com and swung himself back into his station, strapping back in before he looked over the situation boards. He wasn’t seeing any lost transponders across the fleet, though they were a few light-seconds away from the farthest ships. 
So far, so good.

He opened the fleet-wide, keeping one eye on the accelerometer displays as he did so. “All ships, this is Roberts on the Cheyenne. Report in with current status.”

One by one, the others reported in, culminating in the Apache checking in as intact but damaged. Still eyeing the accelerometers with the thought of a lurking ship in the back of his mind, he keyed the channel over to the Apache’s dedicated link.

“Apache, this is Cheyenne. Report specifics on your status.”

The delay due to their range caused several seconds to pass before the response came back from the Apache.

“We lost fifteen people in lower engineering during the attack, but the seals held and we’re not currently composed of expanding plasma, so we’re all right I guess,” Captain James May came back, sounding seriously pissed.

“Can you effect repairs?”

More time passed.

“Negative. Apache is most likely bound for the breakers,” James answered, his response clearing up why he was so pissed.

“Say again, Apache. Are you unrecoverable? Should we evac your crew?”