The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) (3 page)

The command deck housed two people, and that was it, pilot and co-pilot, while the rest of the eight man crew tried to keep her in one piece from below. Like all ships built on Earth in the last hundred years, she was about as solid as you got. Ten thousand tons of meteoric iron spun-welded into an ugly cigar and wrapped around a five-thousand-ton VASIMR drive.

Alder swore as he got a look at the first compiled image and slapped his hand down over the alarm switch.

“All hands, general quarters. I say again, all hands to general quarters. This is not a fucking drill.”

Beside him, Chief Bitte swore softly, eyes on the screens.

“Holy shit.”

Less than three light minutes ahead of them, closing far too quickly for Alder’s liking, was what looked like an Armada moving slowly out of the Epsilon Jump Point.

The Alamo Shipyards

West Jovian Trojan Point

Admiral Nadine Brooke stepped awkwardly through the curving corridor, intently aware that the environment she was traversing wasn’t built for the standard gravity it had been converted to. She ducked under a water reclamation hose and made her way into the control center for the station.

“Admiral on deck!”

“As you were,” she said, eyes gravitating to where the commodore in charge of the facility was standing. “Permission to enter, Commodore.”

“Granted, Admiral. Come on up here and have a look at your new ship.”

She stepped up beside him, looking out over the vac-dock section of the facility. Her ship wasn’t the only one being built in the immense space beyond the air seal; there were five others just like it on this side of the facility alone.

“Modified Terra Class. We’ve made some changes based on what we learned building TF-7’s ships,” the commodore said quietly. “Officially, they’re still listed as Terra Class, but around here we’re referring to them as Valkyries, ma’am.”

Nadine smiled thinly.

The term “Valkyrie” had originally been slapped on her group, particularly from the ground-based military that was still predominantly male, as a snide slur because a such a large portion of her command staff were women. The early days and weeks of the war were horrifically hard on the personnel of the Solarian organization, starting with the near total annihilation of Task Force Two. So total was the devastation, in fact, that there was only one single survivor.

Then Sergeant Sorilla Aida was the sole survivor of her squad and, in fact, the entire Task Force. In that single strike, over ninety percent of the organization’s military officers were killed. Officers that also happened to be mostly men, since the military track was slanted strongly to that side. Nadine herself came up through the science track, a much more gender-balanced group, as did most of her officers.

So they’d staffed TF-V with the most experienced people they had available, and she supposed that no one should have been surprised when the people on the ground started making snide comments about them. She’d been the most experienced spacer available when she took over TF-V, but for combat operations, she could admit, to herself at least, that she had been the proverbial babe in the woods. Most of her command stand had been. Their most experienced military officers were all non-coms, and thank God for them because without them she would not have been surprised if someone had forgotten to pop the safeties off the weapons in their first action.

After the last battle of Hayden, however, no one was saying “Valkyrie” with snide tones and chuckles under their breath. She and her officers took the title and made it theirs, and that was the way it should be and the way it was going to be from that point on. They’d taken ownership of the title, paid for it in blood, and anyone who disrespected the people who’d died under that flag would face her.

Simple as that.

She refocused her attention on the new ships, letting that train of thought fade for the moment. She had others things to concern herself with, and going any deeper down that road would require some free time, privacy, and a bottle of contraband whiskey to toast the fallen.

The new so called “Valkyries” were functionally identical to the Terra Class, of course: Long, squashed cylindrical bodies built around a solid nickel-iron core that housed the powerful VASIMR Drive that powered all human ships. Unlike the old Los Angeles Class ships, the Terra and Valkyrie Class ships housed three large observation decks that jutted out from the aft sections and leaned forward. She knew from the specs that each could be used as an auxiliary bridge when not engaged in combat, or as lounges, observation points, and various other uses.

The biggest change, however, was the ugly bulge at the front of the ship, making each of the new ships look like a snake that had somehow managed to get an apple stuck halfway down its throat. That, along with the hammerhead structure jutting out from the prow, gave the ships a decidedly different silhouette that wasn’t remotely as sleek as the older style.

She supposed that it was an example of military engineering, valuing form over function, because those structures, though ugly as sin, had a function that she and any spacer worth their O2 would value almost as much as their lives.

“What’s her top speed?” she asked softly.

“In our space-time?” The commodore shrugged. “Projections make them a bit faster than the Terra Class, ma’am. Almost 800 standard gravities, but you could push it higher if you get everyone strapped in and everything bolted down. Just remember, once you redline the drive, you lose gravity compensation for acceleration and the crew and ship will get pummeled about just like on the Los Angeles and Cheyenne Class ships.”

“Understood.” She nodded. “It’s amazing that you managed to cram all that into the forward section. How on Earth did you manage to reverse engineer the enemy gravity tech, even to this degree, so quickly?”

“Classified, ma’am,” he said instantly, looking somewhat apologetic. “Even to you.”

Nadine twisted her lips a bit, but nodded. “Understandable, I suppose. How soon until TF-V is refitted and ready to deploy?”

“A few more weeks,” he told her, happy to shift topics. “We have another half dozen hulls on the sundive now. They’ll be slagged by the forge facility as they sling past Mercury and form molded on the way back here. Once they’re in our control, we’ll fit them with all new ceramic panels, control electronics, a new power reactor that is far better than anything you had before, and all the other requirements for a military ship. My crews are the best, ma’am, but even they can only put together ships just so quickly.”

She nodded silently; there was nothing to be said there. It took time to completely rebuild every ship in the fleet, but it was necessary. The Los Angeles and Cheyenne class had served well, but they were hopelessly outclassed by the alien ships. Successes with them so far had come from the fact that most of the battles to date had occurred when one or the other of the groups had been pinned down to planetary defense.

In that situation, you had limitations on speeds that handicapped the aliens, but you couldn’t rely on it. If she were forced to remain in defensive positions entirely, the alien forces would have the initiative, and that would not end well for Earth. They needed ships that could intercept and engage the enemy in deep space,
away
from planetary targets, without giving up a huge tactical edge to the enemy.

Nadine just hoped that the new class of ships was the answer to that problem. Otherwise she had bad misgivings about the future.

*****

Restaurant, Overlooking the Hudson River

Stony Point, NY

It was a small-ish eatery, not one that Sorilla had visited before, but it was clear that Ton had been in the area a time or two. He ordered for them both, after securing permission from her with a glance. She was both amused and appreciative. She’d spent many previous outings with men that went disastrously wrong in either direction. He at least had enough sense to check that his chauvinism was appreciated or, at least, tolerated before he started taking liberties.

While they waited for their food, the two operators exchanged the normal everyday pleasantries one would expect from a couple out on the town, be they professional colleagues or something more. It was the sort of meaningless drivel that Sorilla had picked up quickly when scouting out targets for guerilla ops in various nations that she had both been, and absolutely never been, assigned to.

It was all a cover for a series of sub-voc transmissions pulsing between their respective implants, exchanging far more information than anyone could by voice alone.

A peculiar multi-tasking talent, Sorilla supposed, but one quickly picked up by soldiers equipped with their level of cybernetics. Her own implant suite was far beyond his—most of Ton’s gear was not much more advanced than she’d had on her initial op on Hayden—but that was fine. Most of the com stuff hadn’t changed all that much since she’d gotten her suite.

They shared tactical maps of some of the areas Sorilla had encountered the aliens at. Ton had them already, but it was more to establish a common ground for their conversation. While talking about the weather and the view, Sorilla sub-vocalized a few comments to Ton, supplementing them with fragments of her mission logs, while he sent back the occasional question in like manner.

It was a fast shot-by-shot method of communication that moved information back and forth with shocking swiftness. They were both trained speed readers, though in this case it was more a matter of briefly imprinting the meaning as files flashed passed the visual cortex without actually appearing visually. It didn’t convey emotions particularly well, however, and when she got to a certain part, Ton shifted out of the process and began chuckling deeply, unable to help it.

She scowled at him, recognizing the moment he was laughing at, and spoke aloud. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“That’s just not fucking fair!” he quoted, his voice a rough falsetto.

Sorilla groaned. “I said that aloud?”

“Sub voc,” he grinned, correcting her. “Your implants picked it up.”

“Great,” she muttered, shaking her head ruefully.

In truth, there was very little that the implants they’d put in her didn’t pick up. They were calibrated to record everything she saw and heard; they picked up far more than she could possibly
smell
or taste with the hyperspectral capability of her corneal implants. She supposed her sense of touch was still largely inviolate, but that was about the only exception and even much of that could be interpolated by her implants.

Being enhanced as she was meant giving up a lot of privacy, but being in the military did that too. A lot of things that civilians took for granted were almost unthinkable for her or her comrades and, she supposed, vice versa.

“Anyway,” she sighed, pushing on, “those guys aren’t the same as the Ghoulies, that’s for sure. Charlie there knew how to fight and could take a shot from a battle rifle and keep on coming.”

“I noted that from the records,” Ton said, “not to mention my own brief encounter with them.”

Sorilla nodded. Ton had almost gotten himself killed pulling Crow out of a bad spot in the Hayden jungles. The Charlie types were seriously bad news, no matter how you figured it.

“What do you think about them besides that, though?” Ton asked.

“Operators,” she said simply. “They’ve got to be special forces, or the alien equivalent. You don’t send in small groups of regular military like that, not unless you’re used to fighting from a position of massive superiority.”

“Not even then, not without a hell of a lot more support than those poor bastards were afforded,” Ton shrugged.

“Exactly,” Sorilla said as their food arrived.

They settled in and Sorilla was pleased to find that the food was really quite good. She wasn’t one to complain about what was for dinner, she’d eaten too many barely digestible things in her life for that, but she could still appreciate something like a free range steak with locally grown mushrooms and onions.

Ton scowled playfully at her as she closed her eyes and savored the bite, so she smiled smugly at him in response.

“Trying to drain my poor limited accounts,” he mourned the cost of the meal, shaking his head.

Free range steak was uncommon, not rare, but certainly pricey in the world. Especially in the U.S., where large factory farms had finally been broken up and all but outlawed decades earlier. The costs of fixing the problems with the runaway greenhouse effect had been such that the government had finally stopped subsidizing companies that made it worse.

Most people ate burger steaks now, as a rule. You could buy them in most any flavor you wanted, and they cost a fraction the price of the real thing, using vat-grown meat that was then ground up so the texture wasn’t off putting. That said, it
was
the USA, so the real deal was still available, but cattle farming had moved back to the old school methods of the open range. You got less product, but it was generally higher quality and the market price was high enough to make it worth the while of the ranchers.

“Oh, shut it and eat your steak,” she told him as he forlornly looked her over, no doubt calculating the price of the meal in his head. “You’ll be dining on the Army’s dime soon enough anyway.”

Ton shrugged. “Well, there is that.”

A lot of things had changed over the last century. Hell, things had been on a fast track to change for more than a century before that. Industrialization had opened the door to the stars, but at a price. There had been a point when people wondered if the price would be fatal, but thankfully they’d edged through it and backed away from the edge before they had managed to irrevocably toss themselves over.

Either that or we learned to fly on the way down,
Sorilla thought with a grim amusement.

There was a lot of truth in that sentiment, the idea that the human race had actually stepped over the brink and plummeted into the abyss, only to flap its arms real hard until it managed to fly back to the top. Global warming had become irreversible by the mid-twenty-first century. Nothing done on Earth would put the genie back in the bottle once the global temperatures rose high enough to start freeing deposits of methane from polar grounds.