The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (18 page)

Sorilla knew the numbers all too well. Statistically, it took ten
thousand
hours of practice to become truly proficient at anything. Want to rock the guitar like a master? Ten thousand hours. Drive a car like a race car driver? Ten thousand hours. Anything you wanted to become really good at, not merely passable, you had to be prepared to invest the time, and the magic number was ten thousand.

She doubted that they had that long before this operation was a go, and even if they did, there was no way she or anyone could spend all that time living in a monster robot that barely had room to swing its arms without caving in a bulkhead.

Alright, that was a bit of an exaggeration. The room they were using was a storage section normally used for munitions, and it was pretty big. For humans. After all the munitions were moved out, they had room to walk the beast from one side to the other, almost sort of semi-sprint for a few steps, and practice some katas from her hand-to-hand training just to get the feeling of the machine down.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be enough. She needed more. More of everything, and they weren’t going to get it the way they were going.

Sorilla had requests in for more training space, but the ship was cramped as it was. The only free space was the flight decks, and those were packed with shuttles that couldn’t exactly be crated up and moved off like the munitions could. They had an assembly point on the ship that technically had the room she needed, but again, there were combat vehicles, engineers, mechanics, and god alone knew what else filling it. She just couldn’t risk killing some poor sap because she wasn’t handling her machine properly yet.

Something has to give. Either it’s going to be this machine or me, and I’m damn well not going to let it be me. We’ve got to figure a better way to do this.
Sorilla walked over to the slumped robot and glared at its impassive face.
Maybe I could train out on the hull?

There was one request for the books; she’d love to see the captain’s face if and when he read it.

Requested : Permission to EVA for combat training on the hull. I promise to try and avoid damaging the armor plates with my eighty-ton war machine, sir.

Yeah. Probably best if she kept looking for alternatives.

*****

Raymond Hearse walked with a purpose as he negotiated his way through the upper decks of the USV Legendary. He was deep into officers country and generally walking like he belonged there, much to the minor irritation of many he passed. He didn’t care about that, or about them; he was on the ship for one thing and that was to see that his personal project for DARPA and SOLCOM was a success.

The abrupt change in the schedule was entirely unacceptable.

He sighed audibly when he was held up by security for the flag deck and found himself literally tapping his foot impatiently as he waited to be cleared.

“Honestly, you people know who I am by now, don’t you? I really didn’t think that even the military could suck the brains out of anyone this effectively.”

The Marines on duty didn’t even bother to look up at him, much to his continued annoyance.

“Mr. Hearse, there are procedures to follow. You know this as well as anyone,” one of them said when he signed loudly for the fifth time.

“Mindlessly following procedures is hardly a good use of time,” he countered, rolling his eyes.

“Security breaches are a worse use of time, sir. All right, you check. The admiral isn’t available, however,” the Marine told him.

“What?” Hearse blurted. “Why didn’t you say so before you started the security check?”

“Procedure.”

Hearse glared at the man, knowing damned well that he was smirking at him but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it just then. “Fine. When will she be available?”

“Two days.”

“What? No! I need to speak with her sooner than that!”

“Admiral Brooke is not on the Legendary, sir. We have no means of contacting her for two days.”

There were times when he suspected that the military grunts of the ship were messing with him, and days that he
knew it
. Today was one of the latter, but there was little he could do about it.

“Fine,” he ground out. “I need to see the captain then.”

“Captain Roberts is on the bridge.”

Hearse gritted his teeth, then turned on his heel and walked out. The bridge was one area he had no access whatsoever. He had no chance to get there, but it didn’t mean that he was stumped. Going right to the top had its advantages, but Hearse was well aware that there were ways that were almost as fast, maybe even faster. He made his way down to the administration levels and found the captain’s secretary.

“Ah, Mr. Hearse.” The young officer recognized him as he entered. “What can I do for you today?”

“I’m having a devilish time with the project, Adam,” he said. “As you know, it’s a terribly high priority, but I’m afraid that I’m caught in a pinch here and the admiral is off the ship.”

“I’d heard about that,” the ensign said, nodding. “Lots of rumors floating around, no one really knows where she went, though.”

“Yes, well,” Hearse sighed, more theatrically than before. It didn’t pay to annoy people who could get things accomplished, after all, unlike the Marines, who only existed to put stumbling blocks in his way. “I find that we simply
must
have more space. We can’t run tests in that area, it isn’t safe and it isn’t practical.”

“Hmm,” Adam hummed to himself, checking the logs. “Let’s see here. We have you assigned to a munitions storehouse. I’m sorry, that’s literally the largest area on the ship short of the shuttle bays. Has to be, to run the machine loaders through it.”

“Well, could we clear a shuttle bay?”

Hearse was disappointed at the instant shake of the ensign’s head.

“No, that isn’t possible, sir. The Legendary just doesn’t have the space available to empty a shuttle bay for you.”

“There must be some alternative. We’ll never complete the testing and familiarization program for the lieutenant, let alone her team, at this rate.”

The ensign sighed. “I’ll make some inquiries for you, Mr. Hearse, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. This is a warship, not a development testing area.”

Hearse sighed, but knew from the man’s posture and expressions that he wasn’t getting any further just then. “Thank you, please let me know if anything comes up.”

“I’ll contact you in a couple hours, but remember what I said…”

“I know, I won’t get my hopes up.”

Hearse left, leaving the young officers in the shared office to look at each other.

“Are you actually going to call anyone?” one asked, half smiling.

“For that prick? No.” Adam shook his head. “I would if I thought it would do any good, but the computer doesn’t lie. We don’t have anywhere to put them with more room. We had to have four teams work double shifts just to clear that area. There are Hammers piled up in the corridors from A Level to C.”

“I know, I bunk on C.”

Adam winced, but shrugged. “Well then, you know we’ve got nowhere to send them.”

“That isn’t quite true.”

The two turned, surprised by the intrusion of the third voice. One of the admiral’s secretaries was standing in the doorway, a flimsy in her arms as she glanced up at them from whatever she was reading.

“It isn’t?” Adam blinked. “Begging your pardon, but the computer…”

“Only shows what is available on the Legendary.”

“Well, yeah, that’s the point.”

“No, the point is that we have another class of ship in this Task Group. Call up the interior specs on the USV Socrates, latest refits.”

Adma frowned but turned to his console and did just that. When the specs came up, he choked.

“Holy God! What are they doing with that much interior space?”

“The ship was designed to carry hundreds of kilometers of cable for a tether, as well as everything a colony would need to survive and get set up. Now it’s been assigned to us as a glorified tow truck and repair yard. They only need a fraction of its internal space for crew.”

“My lord, if I hadn’t seen it…” Adam shook his head. “All right, thanks, I guess. I’ll run this past the captain and see if it’s an option.”

“You mean I might get the hallway to my room back?”

*****

Sorilla looked up at the brutish-looking figure slumped in front of her. She had replaced her helm, the new HUD felt odd to her eyes, but she was getting used to it. She had to learn to live in her armor, and as much as she was frustrated with it, she had to learn to live in the bot as well.

Why’d that idiot design the thing to be run by implants? That damn paralysis drip gives me the creeps and makes my skin crawl.

She did admire the technical achievement of the big machine, both in brute design and in the more refined software and hardware needed to control it. She was intimately familiar with both and knew how hard it must have been to surmount some of the challenges they had to have dealt with.

Humanoid bots had been tried before, were even somewhat successful in some cases. She knew some artillery units that used bipedal mobile guns for rough terrain, but they were slow and operated entirely on computer control. Sure, they could move over softer terrain than even tracked vehicles, tackling terrain that most heavy vehicles would have a nervous breakdown just looking at, but they couldn’t react to anything unexpected, couldn’t adapt.

The new control system leveraged the power of the implants sitting in her skull to a level nothing else ever had, but it meant learning an entirely new control system and she was getting too old to learn new tricks.

It didn’t really help that it didn’t feel like a job she was qualified, or had trained, for. She was Special Forces: She worked with her hands, not a huge ass tank on two legs.

She knew why she’d been tapped, of course. That was plain, even if it hadn’t been outlined in the brief. She was the most experienced op they had when it came to dealing with the aliens; she’d seen more, fought more, and, frankly, killed more than anyone else on the ground. Her instincts had proven reliable so far when dealing with them, so it made sense to give her a mission this high priority.

She also had a suite of implants that made her more capable than most when dealing with the gravity-bending technology of the enemy. Sorilla didn’t pretend to know why her head was wired differently, or how she had integrated the information feeds the way she had, but it was an advantage she didn’t mind having and one that had clearly helped her career.

So Sorilla Aida found herself glaring up at the slumbering giant, determined not to let the bastard beat her.

You hear me, you overgrown garden gnome? You’re not kicking
my
ass, not now and not ever.

*****

Aion SOLCOM Facilty

Nadine Brooke found herself blown away every time she learned something new about the Aion facility. What they were doing there she would have sworn was entirely impossible.

No, not impossible,
Brooke corrected herself,
but as good as in many ways.

She knew that time travel had always been considered theoretically possible. If you could move in space, than you could certainly move in time as well. The problems with it were manifold, however, given the way human beings experienced time.

“What about paradox?” she asked finally.

Mathew smiled. “That’s a good question, one I’m glad you asked. The answer is…well, it’s complicated.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“Honestly, we don’t have much of one,” Mathew admitted, grinning widely. “It’s one of the big things we study, but so far we don’t think it’s possible to initiate a paradox. Or, at least, we are unable to experience one as human beings.”

That made some sense to her, since it was possible that a paradox would resolve itself outside human senses.

“You’ve tried to create a paradox then?” she asked. Given the way he’d spoken she figured it was a good bet.

“Not in so many words, but we’ve been using the device to compress our research and we’ve had mixed results,” he admitted. “In some cases, when we tried to use data from the device in our research here, the results were badly scrambled. However, if we offloaded the data to a lab that was isolated from our feedback under contract for the next six months, the results were confirmable and repeatable.”

Brooke leaned back, breathing out as she considered that. “So you were somehow contaminating your own experiment?”

“That’s our best guess, yes,” Mathew said before admitting, “Though we can’t figure out how, beyond the obvious theories.”

“Obviously. You can’t work on the data you send back, because if you do, you risk contaminating the data you will send back.” She frowned. “But can’t you just resend the exact file you received?”

“First thing we tried, still scrambled our results.” Mathew shrugged.

“I’m getting a headache,” Brooke admitted painfully.

“That’s how we spend most of our days here, yes.”

“I’ll bet. Dare I ask why I was cleared to be briefed in on this project?”

Mathew nodded, leaning forward. “A few reasons, actually. We’ve recorded the signature of this station’s space-time warp, and we want you to look for any sign of a matching signature out there.”

“You’re concerned that the aliens may have a similar device,” Nadine nodded.

“Exactly, and you’ll be running deeper than anyone else ever has according to your mission brief.”

“Potentially.”

“Well, that’s one reason.”

“Is there another?”

“Isn’t there always?” Mathew asked with a smile. “We have some new developments that may be of use to you. We’re limited now to refining what we already know—there don’t seem to be any huge breakthroughs looming—but refinements can swing the scales.”

“Yes, they can. I presume you mean on control of the gravity systems?”

He nodded. “For the most part. They’re minor improvements to software. I’m sure you were told that the courier that brought you here had fourth-generation gravetics?”

“Yes, I was rather shocked. There has been no hint of rumors about a new drive.”